Welcome to this week’s dev diary. I’m David Horler, the Art Lead at Tinto, and I’m very excited to show you what the art team has been cooking up in recent months.

In the last year the art team at our Barcelona studio has exploded, rapidly expanding to the 9 talented artists that we have today—including every discipline from 3D character artist to UI developer. We have so much interesting stuff planned for the future, but for now I’ll introduce to you some of the work we’ve already done for Origins.

So what is the process for making art in one of our immersion packs? The first thing that happens is the brief, in this case Johan asked us to prepare 16 unit models and 2 missionaries for sub-Saharan Africa, a hugely underrepresented area in terms of previous art DLCs.

We opened up the game to see which cultures are missing art, and while East and West Africa already had unit models, we noticed a large area of southern Africa that was not already covered by unit packs.



Our artists started doing research for interesting and unique types of clothing historically worn by people in this area. Historical authenticity is very important in this kind of game so we were careful with our references. However, we permitted ourselves a little bit more creativity in later tiers, to create “what-if?” unit models, rewarding players who pull off amazing feats of technological progress.

After the research, concept artist Irene and 2D artist Ruben set to work making concepts for these characters. The goal was to start with simple warriors, and then as the ages progress they become increasingly complex in their appearance—eventually evoking the disciplined regiments of Napoleonic Europe but with a distinctive African twist.

Since these units would be used across many different countries, we needed to figure out where the country colours would go at this stage as well; in this case red is primary, yellow is secondary, and blue is tertiary.


The first ideas are rarely the best, so the artists explore many iterations as we try to find the right shapes and colours, as you can see with our work on the Coptic missionary here:



Over the next few months we worked together with our friends at N-iX Game & VR Studio to turn these concepts into 3D models that are both functional and look great. To start with we make a very high resolution model in ZBrush with all the cloth folds and surface details that we want. This is made with a combination of digital clay sculpting and cloth simulation, both of which are essential processes in modelling characters for modern video games.



It looks beautiful, but with this many polygons it is impractical for realtime rendering, so the next step is to bake all those details into a normal map texture that is wrapped around a low-poly model.

Once baked, we start the texturing process. In EU4’s past, we have laboured over dozens of layers in Photoshop, but recently we have adapted our workflow to use Substance 3D Painter, which is an incredibly powerful tool much better suited to texturing models.



When the textures are finalised, the models are rigged to a skeleton and finally imported into the game. In the case of the missionaries, we got to make brand new animations as well. We then implement it, its testing is managed by our internal QA coordinator and carried out by external QA teams.

For some context of how long this sort of unit pack takes to make, the entire process began in early April and was finished in September. And here are the final products! Let us know what you think of them.


As well as new mission tree icons and the monuments you saw in October, we have also been busying our 2D artists with more advisor portraits in forgotten parts of the world.

Since Leviathan released with so much flavour for Aboriginal Australians, Southeast Asians, and Polynesians, the advisor portraits for those cultures have been high on our art request list. So for Origins we have made a full set of male and female advisor portraits for each of those regions that will add even further to the immersion of playing there.



And of course, a release wouldn’t be complete without a new loading screen. We present Nzingha Mbande of Ndongo, a fascinating queen from Angola who resisted Portuguese colonisation, protecting her people from the Atlantic slave trade. A shrewd diplomat and accomplished tactician, she is remembered as one of the great inspirational women in African history, and was previously featured in our free Women in History DLC.

The loading screen will of course be included in the 1.32 patch; we will drop more info on the free update very soon!



Come join us at the Paradox Stream, on Wednesday the 3rd and 10th of November at 5pm CET for the first showcase of Origins! Mordred and Bjorn will be joined by Content Designer Álvaro (Pavía) for the stream, and will be able to answer any questions you may have.

I hope you enjoyed this dev diary, and I can’t wait to see what you think of Origins when it releases in just over a week’s time!

Hello everyone, and be welcomed! In today’s DD we are going to take a look at different topics of the Origins Immersion Pack, and 1.32 patch: the new Judaism mechanics, more new mission trees all along Africa, and the setup changes we’ve done to the region. So, it will be content-heavy, then.

Let’s start with the new Judaism mechanics. It was one major religion lacking mechanics at this point of the game, so we thought that now it would be a good moment to handle it. Semien is the only country that can spawn with Judaism early game, while it can also be adopted by one of the most important countries in Origins, Ethiopia. And, on a side note, as it was VERY requested by you in the previous DD, and that reassured us on the ongoing work over it!

How we have designed it, Judaism works very similar to Protestantism, as it has 3 slots for Torah Aspects, each one costing 100 points of Faith Power. Those points are gained at a rate of 10% of your monarch points per month, minus a modifier depending on your religious unity.



Torah Aspects are split into three categories (Administrative, Diplomatic, and Military), and each category have 3 slots to chose upon, giving your country some benefits and modifiers, that are fully shown in a tooltip if you hover the click button over it:

ADM Aspects unlock the use of the ‘Celebrate Festival’ button, which has different effects depending on the ADM Aspect you have chosen. The ‘Celebrate Festival’ action costs 200 Faith Power. The three aspects give you following modifiers:
-2 National Unrest modifier, and using ‘Celebrate Festival’ gives +1 Stability.
-5% Technology Cost modifier, and using ‘Celebrate Festival’ gives +20 Reform Progress, +5 Legitimacy (or equivalent), and +5 Claim Strength of Heir.
-0.5 Interest Per Annum modifier, and using ‘Celebrate Festival’ gives 0.3 Years of Income, and reduces Inflation by 1.



DIP Aspects manipulate the relations your people have with the Abrahamic religions and vice versa. Each aspect gives a passive bonus additionally to their modifiers:
+2 Tolerance of the True Faith, all Jewish Provinces have no culture penalties.
+2 Tolerance of Heathens, all Christian and Muslim provinces have no effect on the Religious Unity of your country.
-10% Development Cost, all Non-Theocratic Christian and Muslim countries gain +35 Opinion of you.



MIL Aspects modify the military strength of the country and affect the generation of Faith Power. The modifiers are the following:
-15% Land Attrition, during war you get +10% (20% in defensive wars) Manpower Recovery Speed and +5% (10% in defensive wars) Faith Power
+25% Fort Defense, gain +2 Siege Progress if you siege your own fallen forts, gain +15 Faith Power for every occupied enemy fort
+5% Land and Navy Morale, winning battles decreases War Exhaustion by 0.05, winning wars gives +50 Faith Power



On top of that, we have created a set of new flavor events for Jewish countries. Some of their topics are the reconstruction of the Third Temple, making the ruler choose some things during Sabbath, Abrahamic religions converting to Judaism, and about the figure of the Messiah as their topics. Others are centered around the celebrations, so you can have a proper Bar Mitzvah for your heir, and 3 celebrations around the year: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot.





Now let’s take a look at the setup changes we’ve done for 1.32, along with some more new mission trees. Here we’ve got 4 new regional mission trees (West Africa, Central Africa, Horn of Africa, and East Africa), so every country in Sub-Saharan Africa will have at least one specific or one of those, and we’ve also added 5 more ‘minor’ mission trees (Jolof, Mossi, Hausa, Oyo and Adal), as we had some extra development time, and we decided that more content would be best. So, let’s go region by region, then.



In West Africa we’ve made a few changes. From west to east, Macina is no longer a starting country. However, it can spawn as a revolter after Fulani culture expands to the provinces of Termes, Wagadu and Baghena (at game start, in northern Mali and SW Timbuktu), and it can be also formed by a country with Fulani culture (Great Fulo, for instance). Then we have divided the former Mossi tag into three new ones: Yatenga, Wagadugu and Fada N’Gourma. We could have created more, but we decided to use the same criteria as for Hausan countries, to not have too many OPM’s in the region. Finally, we have created the Wadai Emirate at the east of Lake Chad and Yao. Our intention here is to have a continuum of inhabited provinces from the Atlantic to the Indic Oceans, after both Great Fulo and Funj spawns by event, portraying the traditional trade route of Darfur corridor.

All countries in this region without a specific mission tree will have a new, generic one. It has 3 different paths, a military one, other economic, and the third one religious. The first two interact among themselves, and have as their main objective to assert your country as the powerhouse in West Africa. Meanwhile, the third mission set is in reality two, as Islamic and Fetishist countries will have different paths; Muslims will aim to impose their faith as the only one in the region, while Fetishists will aim to establish a syncretic traditional religion in their country.



Now let’s take a look at the minor mission trees we added in this region. The first one is for Jolof. The first two columns are about pushing Mali out of West Africa, replacing them and establishing an empire in West Africa. Additionally, you also aim to contact the Europeans and make a deal with them. Apart from that, we wanted to portray their specific government form, with Jolof being ‘primus inter pares’ of some smaller kingdoms. Because of that, they now have a unique government reform to represent the kingdom confederacy Jolof used to be, so now these ‘petty kingdoms’ are three ‘estate privileges', which represent the decentralization of Jolof. The thirds column in the mission tree requests you to centralize by taking certain privileges. Centralizing the state requires you to have at least 2 stability and a lot of estate loyalty with the chieftains. If you centralize you will automatically lose one stab and a good chunk of estates loyalty.







For the Mossi, we have a common mission tree for the three countries, but also for that tag if each of those are able to form it by decision. Their mission focus is pretty straight forward: Conquer West Africa! The "Invade" missions will immediately loot important cities and give you all of its gold.



Forming Mossi will trigger one event later on and add two missions to your tree about their government form. Unlike Jolof's Confederacy, the Mossi Confederal Kingdom is more beneficial. It gives you access to the Tribal Federation mechanic if you have Cradle of Civilization and unlocks a bunch of new decisions for you too. The effects of the decisions are not instant however, as they will always take about 6 months before being in effect. In addition, you have to ‘pay’ in legitimacy and local autonomy. Finally, completing the ‘Centralize the Confederacy’ mission allows you to break out of this government reform or reinforce it even more through an event choice.





Hausan missions also have the same scope as the Mossi ones, so you can have them as one of their starting countries, or if you form the Hausa tag. They are about the conquest of the other Hausa states. Then, ‘Unite the Cities’ requires you to be either Hausa or Sokoto. To help the early phase out you can request militaristic aid from allies through the mission ‘Form Alliances"’. Hausa's mission ‘Develop the Cities’ revolves around the 7 cities which were founded by the 7 different Hausa rulers. Completing this mission will give every one of these 7 cities a unique province modifier for 10 years, reflecting the history and role of these cities. ‘Resolve Internal Issues’ will enable a decision for you, which allows you to get these bonuses for these 7 cities every 20 years again. ‘Contact with the Fulani’ triggers an event for you, which makes Fulani into an accepted culture for you. Through this you are allowed to form Sokoto, and then it will replace the fourth column with three missions, which are about the Jihad in West Africa. The last reward for converting all the provinces to Islam is a permanent +2 Tolerance of True Faith and -0.5% Prestige Decay.




Finally we have the Oyo mission tree. First column is about their historical usage of cavalry. As such you are emphasized to trade with the Muslims. After that you unlock a special mercenary company for them. The mission ‘Chaaaarge!!’ will disable the Army Professionalism cost from this cavalry merc company. The remaining columns are about pushing the Muslims out of West Africa and becoming the dominant power of West Africa. Oyo is also the defender of the Fetishistic faith (though not really a defender, but you get the idea). As such, the province Ife has gained a specific bonus. Oyo's missions are also special in their requirements, as they allow progress through tributaries too! It’s done through a special government reform, which allows you to do that. Then, the mission ‘Reform the Government’ will unlock an estate privilege which allows tributaries even if they are no longer a tribal country. It should be noted that if you revoke the privilege at any time your tributaries will break free, so use this one with caution.







Now let’s move to Congo and Central Africa. Here we felt comfortable with the setup, as it allows a diverse gameplay with different countries, with Kongo as the main powerhouse, as you already know. What we’ve done is adding a new mission tree for the other countries in both regions. They are mainly in three branches. In the war/economic branch, you start preparing for war, and the idea is that at first it’s used to boost your economy, through raiding. This is represented with a mission requiring you to have multiple war reparations. Once you are able to maintain and train a proper army you start expanding to the point of becoming the military power of the region (with a mission requiring you to have the biggest army around), and then you can go up to become an empire. The second branch is the diplomatic, that starts by getting strong allies to secure your position (the mission actually requires for them to be strong, or being either Kongo, Kilwa or Mutapa), then gaining the trust of the allies, then once your position is secure you turn to aggressive diplomacy with the missions requiring you to have vassals and then (tied to the war path too) going to a point of inflicting a crushing blow to a rival to humiliate them (which is in itself a requirement for becoming an empire). The third branch is the religious one, with you first starting as a fetishist gathering pokem... I mean, cults, and then the idea is that you get in contact with the Muslim countries (tied to the alliances missions of the diplomacy branch), from whom you can get valuable info, and then it's just expanding your religion, first by waring against any country that borders you but is not your religion, and then by having to convert province.



Then we have the Horn of Africa. Here we have added another new tag, Ogadeen, portraying the Somali clans that inhabit that space. This regional mission tree revolves around religious clashes. Your aim is to conquer and convert the heathens, uniting the tags of your faith, and become the main power of the region. After completing the final mission of those branches, ‘Save the Horn’, you will get the permanent modifier ‘The Holy Horn’, giving you +50% Religious Unity in reward for your efforts. In parallel to that, you’ve got some missions with an economic scope, that aims at your country being the main trade power in the Indian Ocean.



In the same region we have the last ‘minor’ mission tree, that of Adal. Their missions are mostly focused on giving Ethiopia a real fight to deal with. This is especially emphasized by a mission reward early on, ‘Restore the Old Mosque’, that is about the mosque Masjid al-Qiblatayn in Zeila, one of the oldest mosques in Africa; so, developing Zeila will give you a great Mosque there. ‘Reach the Turks’ is about establishing relations with the Ottomans. This mission can be completed by having any kind of regiment at the coast of the Mediterranean or in a province held by a Turkish country. It will trigger an event chain, not limited to the Ottomans, as it will seek out for the strongest Turkish power in Anatolia, that will eventually give some Janissary mercenaries; should there be no Turkish power at all in Anatolia in the rare occasion that the wet dream of a Byzantophile comes true, then Adal will ask Mamluks for help instead, unlocking the Mamluks mercs instead of the Janissaries. The rest of the mission tree is pretty straight-forward: unite the Somali clans, eliminate Ethiopia, convert the Horn of Africa, and get a connection to West Africa.






Let’s finish with the East Africa mission tree. Here we have focused on trade, regional expansion and strategic one in trade ports as main focuses. The objective is, obviously, becoming a great power (who would have noticed that regarding EU4!). However, one of the last missions of the tree is a funny one, as you’ll be aiming at reversing the trade visit that Zheng He made to the region a few decades ago, establishing a strong trade presence in the Chinese region trade ports.





So that’s all for today, which I think is a lot, as we covered a bunch of very different content all across the continent. Actually, this is the last DD delivered from CD Team, as the next DD’s before release will be focusing on the new Art in Origins Immersion Pack, the new Achievements we’ve created, and the changelog (be prepared for it, as it will have hundreds of fixes that will go live with 1.32 patch, literally!). As always, your feedback will be appreciated; just be civil, and take into account that some numbers may be tweaked before release. See you!

19 October 2021 - STOCKHOLM - The gold of Zimbabwe. The ivory of Central Africa. The great city of Timbuktu. The temples of Ethiopia. Africa is the birthplace of humanity and a land of untold wealth and variety. Rediscover and rewrite the history of the continent in a new immersion pack for Europa Universalis IV, coming 11 November 2021. It will be available for the suggested retail price of $9.99/￡7.19 / € 9.99.

In Europa Universalis IV: Origins, new African missions add greater variety and new goals for some of Africa’s most powerful and interesting nations. The fading giant of Mali, the holy hills of Ethiopia and the African trade centers of the Indian Ocean are given new depth and richer context.



The Europa Universalis IV: Origins immersion pack adds:

• Jewish Religion: The Ethiopian Jews of Beta Israel are included, and Jewish nations can choose from nine religious characteristics to accentuate their national strengths, with new flavor events.
  
• Missions for Mali: Halt the decline of West Africa’s greatest medieval empire and reassert control of former vassals.
  
• Missions for Songhai: Develop your provinces and claim the mantles of Mali and Timbuktu as the new rising power.
  
• Missions for Kongo: Unite the peoples of the Congo River and confront the growing European threat.
  
• Missions for Ethiopia: Ensure religious unity and prestige in the Kingdom of Solomon while unifying the nations of the African Horn. Also adds the noble Ç̌äwa regiments.
  
• Missions for Ajuuraan: Control Indian Ocean trade and bring water to your desert provinces.
  
• Missions for Kilwa: Focus on naval economic power, establishing a colonial empire across the seas.
  
• Missions for Mutapa: Build on the legacy of the founders of Great Zimbabwe and exploit the riches of South Africa to dominate trade.
  
• Minor Mission Additions: New mission options for Jolof, Mossi, Hausa, Oyo and Adal.
  
• New Regional Mission Trees: New Missions for minor powers in Central, East and West Africa, and the African Horn, as well as new estate privileges for many nations and regions.
  
• New Army Sprites: 4 new army sprites each for Congo, Great Lakes, Southern Africa and Bantu nations
  
• Two New Missionary models: African Coptic and African Fetishist missionary animations added.
  
• New Music: 12 minutes of new West African themed music, and 12 minutes of new East African themed music.

As usual, the release of Europa Universalis IV: Origins will be accompanied by a major update, free for all EU4 players.

Hello and welcome to the 5th Dev Diary for the upcoming Africa update!

Today we shall take a look at the two biggest tags in East Africa and Southern Africa: Kilwa and Mutapa as well as the formables of Africa. Please take into account that all modifiers and numbers are currently under ongoing testing, and as we want to continue gathering your feedback, some may be changed before release. Let’s get started with Kilwa!

Kilwa has been historically a great trade power in East Africa with connections to Far East Asia. To represent this, the mission tree is heavily focused on the naval presence and trade dominance of the trade nodes which eventually lead into the Zanzibar trade node.

The first column from the left focuses on the gold sources of Mutapa as well as the colonization of Southern Africa. “The Gold of Zimbabwe” will give you access to a decent conquistador, which allows you to explore the Cape, while the mission “The Uncharted South” grants you a colonist for 30 years to make life a little bit easier.

The second column is more focused on the development of your heartland while the third column revolves around the conquest of the coastline of the Zanzibar trade node and African coasts of the Gulf of Aden coastline. Your final goal, “Claim Trade Hegemony”, is to funnel the trade flow to your home trade node and to secure it. By doing so you will get a neat +15% Trade Efficiency for the rest of the game.

Finally, the fourth and fifth columns are about dominating the trade of Malacca and the Moluccas. Although these missions give you a bonus to colonization, it is possible to complete these missions through trading alone. It is not absolutely required to colonize - with the exception of the Australia mission.

Now, there is one mission I want to highlight more, which stands out on its own: “Reconnect with Persia”. According to Kilwan legends, the sultanate was founded by one of the seven sons of the Persian Emir Al-Hassan of Shiraz. While the historical base of the legend is questionable, it served as the legitimation of the ruling dynasty of Kilwa. The mission goes a step further and allows Kilwa to establish contact with the home land they believe to originate from.

You can complete the mission through either allying with the owner of the province Shiraz or by having one regiment positioned in the province of Shiraz (without being at war with the owner) - how you achieve this is up to you. Completing the mission will trigger the following event:

Of course the owner of Shiraz will receive a contact event from Kilwa too:


While the embassies are a nice passive bonus, they also provide some useful events for both countries from time to time. There are 3 random events in total, which are the following:



All three random events share a hard cooldown of 10 years and have a mean time to happen of 5 years.
Additionally there are two events for Kilwa, which happen a lot more rarely:


I also should point out that if either nation loses the embassy, the other country will lose their own too, severing the diplomatic connection both had.

Additionally to the mission tree, Kilwa received its own set of ideas too!



With that said, let us move on to Mutapa!

Mutapa is the successor state of Zimbabwe, and as such your mission tree revolves around surpassing this realm of old times. As Mutapa you also start with your capital Zimbabwe, which declines rapidly shortly after game start:

The third column of the mission tree is focusing on restoring the once great city and to bring it back to its former glory. “Fate of Zimbabwe” helps fortunately out as it has a very unique reward, which is the ability to increase development through constructing buildings.

The development from the buildings you get harmonizes with the modifier of the building. So in other words you get the following development for constructing the following buildings:

• Trade Buildings increase Local Production by 1/2/3
  
• Navy Buildings increase Local Production by 1/2
  
• Army Buildings increase Local Manpower by 1/2
  
• Production Buildings increase Local Production by 1/2
  
• Government Buildings increase Local Tax by 1/2
  
• Taxation Buildings increase Local Tax by 1/2
  
• Universities increase Local Tax by 2
  
• All manufactory buildings except for the Ramparts, State House and Soldier’s Households increase Local Development by 2
  
• State Houses increase the Local Tax by 2
  
• Soldier’s Households increase the local manpower by 2

I want to point out that upgrading a building will also add development to a lesser degree. For example: if you build a cathedral you gain +2 Local Tax. If you upgrade a church, which already gave you +1 Local Tax, to a cathedral you gain again +1 Local Tax.

This way you have a little bit of an easier time in achieving the mission “Restore Zimbabwe”, which requires you to have 20 development in the Zimbabwe province again. As a reward the “Abandoned Ruins” province modifier gets removed and the local development cost is reduced by 15% for the rest of the game. It also gives +0.5 legitimacy too.

Reaching 400 development and reaching the borders of old Zimbabwe will allow you to complete the mission “Eclipse Great Zimbabwe”, granting you the Empire rank and firing the following event for you:


(The borders you see on the image are not required to have to form Zimbabwe)

While the third column of missions revolves around Zimbabwe, the first one is more about the internal, religious stability of Mutapa. The second column is about getting Southern Africa under your control and becoming one of the great powers. “Great Power of Africa” especially emphasizes it as you are required to be amongst the top three great powers (or have 700 total development if Rights of Man or Emperor is not active) and have an army size of 100 regiments. As a reward you gain +25 Permanent Power Projection.

The fourth column of missions is very similar to the Kilwan trade missions. However, it focuses more on getting access to the trade node of China instead of dominating it.

Finally we have the last column on the most right, which is about overhauling your military - and recruiting the Nguni for your army. “Recruit the Nguni” especially will be interesting for the people who want to tag switch into a strong, military country while still having a challenge to face. For that you must reach administrative tech 15 (which is the “Military Administration” technology) and develop the manpower of Mtetwa and Natal to 8 for both of them. After that you get this lovely event:


The Zulu are intended to be a fun country to play, even if we know that they may spawn this way much earlier than in our timeline. Because of that we have abstained from creating a mission tree for them. However, because the Zulu here are directly created through militarization of the Nguni, the ideas are heavily inspired by the reforms of Shaka Zulu:

Also, you don’t have to start as Mutapa to create the Zulu. Every country with their capital in Southern Africa has the decision “Militarize the Nguni”, which has the same requirement as the Mutapa mission. The big difference however is that you don’t fire an event immediately. Instead you gain 2 years worth of manpower and increase the unrest in your two Nguni provinces by 5 for 25 years. Additionally, the following event can fire:

It should be noted that the AI will NOT attempt to enact the decision. The “Rise of the Zulu” event can fire naturally when the year is 1750 or later and is guaranteed to fire around 1816.

Speaking of formables: we introduce a bunch of formable countries with patch 1.32 in Africa (and one in the Middle East). Here is a little gallery of what you can expect!






@Pavía already announced that Judaism gets new mechanics. Because of that we have decided to give one more addition for Jewish countries, which is the formable country of Israel!


As Butua you can form Rozwi, but your ideas will not change. It is basically a color and flag change and a free kingdom rank for you.

Of course we also have these two as formables now!

Additionally, the decision to form Sokoto has been improved too, allowing you to form them earlier - if you achieve the requirements of course.


One last point I want to address: in my last dev diary I mentioned that Fetishism receives some buffs. I also presented the idea of Cults for your heirs. While this mechanic is a mission tree reward for Kongo, it is actually available for every Fetishist country in the world - but in a different form. With 1.32 we introduce a bunch of new estate privileges, which you can use to improve your experience. Here is a small list of the new privileges we have for you:

These privileges are part of “Rights of Man”.
“Embrace Singular Cult” improves the modifier of the cult you have active by 100%.
“Embrace Singular Cult” cannot be active with “Build Shrines for Heirs” and “Flexible Cults” at the same time.
We also have two new privileges for Muslim countries:

These privileges are part of “Cradle of Civilization”.

We also have privileges which are part of the free update for you to use!


Values are all subjects to changes of course. I would like to hear your personal first impression and feedback about the privileges so we can release them in a more balanced state!

With that said, I hope you enjoyed this dev diary! [USER=52443]@Pavía[/user] will continue with an overview of the remaining mission trees and the mechanics for Judaism. Until then I wish you a nice week!

Hello everybody, and welcome! This week we will shift the focus from the upcoming African content, to the new Monuments that we will be introducing for Leviathan DLC owners, and that will come along with the 1.32 patch.

As this has been quite a popular feature of the last DLC, we felt that we could create a few more for the game. And when I say a few, I mean that we’ve almost doubled them, with 52 new monuments being added. So first let’s talk a bit about the creative process and the decisions that we made when choosing which ones we wanted, and then I will be showing some of them (although not all, as that would really be a long post, and we want to surprise you a bit when looking at them for the first time ingame!).

The creative process started a few months ago, just after releasing the new Monuments of 1.31.5 patch. As we pointed out back then, the thing that takes more time about this feature is the Art involved, and because of that you’ve not heard anything about them in a few months. So, we really wanted to choose some beautiful and meaningful buildings to be included.

Apart from that, we also wanted the regional distribution of the Monuments to be a bit fairer, as we felt that some regions were crowded with them, but others were a bit sparse. So here you have a sneak peak of that:



Now we have 18 monuments in America (11 new), 31 in Europe (16 new), 9 in Africa (5 new), 45 in Asia (19 new), and 2 in Oceania (1 new). That’s 52 new monuments in total. We would have preferred to have a few more monuments here and there, but overall we are mostly happy with the result, and we really hope you enjoy them.

So, where did our inspiration to pick the new ones come from? First we incorporated the ones that were voted for in the forum around May; so, Cahokia, Malbork Castle, Brandenburg Gate, Santa Maria del Fiore, Bran Castle, the Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela, the Great Living Chola Temples, Porcelain Tower of Nanjing and Nan Madoll are in.

Then, we had been gathering suggestions from the community here in the forums, in the Monuments-specific threads. We have to thank you all for the passion you showed, as we had a long-list of around 100 Monuments to pick from, and that was a great inspiration for us. Last, but not least, we checked a lot of different places from the UNESCO World Heritage list.

Now let’s go to the cool part of the DD, and let me show you some of the new Monuments.

[[i]Disclaimer[/i]: modifiers are currently being tested by us and our QA, so expect changes on them when 1.32 patch is released.]

First one we want to show you is in the Americas: the Qhapaq Ñam, portraying the famous Incan Road System. Although we brainstormed a bit about how we could do this without being attached to only one province, we thought that it would be a bit difficult to do, and we wanted to be coherent with the other monuments, which are located in only one province. Anyway, we represented this as a buff for an united Andean Empire, and because of that it’s on the most northern tag of the region. If you notice the last modifier, it is a new one affecting Yearly Inti Authority (there's a word lacking there to be fixed, yes!), so we think it’s a nice buff for the main religion in the region:



Next one is Santa Maria del Fiore, one widely requested by the community, and one that we obviously think should be included, as being so Stendhal-esque! We took the opportunity to add a nice modifier to it, so here you have this Monthly Splendor modifier that we think fits perfectly with it:



Now let’s move to Africa. It was obvious for us that some new Monuments had to be added to the region we’re focusing on for the next Immersion Pack, and make them useful with the new content we’ve been designing. So here you’ve got the famous Rock-Hewn Churches at Lalibela, that gives some extra flavour when playing as Ethiopia, as it’s our first Coptic-related Monument. And I’ll give you some extra info, not directly related with today’s DD, but with this area: yes, we will have some new mechanics for Judaism! But those will be revealed in a couple weeks.



Let’s go now to Asia. Here we’ve added a bunch of monuments to India, as we felt this subcontinent to be a bit empty of Monuments in comparison to other regions. One of those is Hampi, the renowned capital of Vijayanagar, that grew as a really princely city (until being razed by the Bahmani Empire, of course…). So, here we’ve got a couple of interesting things to show. First is the new ‘All Estates’ Loyalty Equilibrium’, that now will make our lives (and modders’ ones!) easier, as we can add this loyalty equilibrium modifier to all the existing estates in our country. The other thing is that we added a couple new requirements for Buddhist Monuments, so now they can be used also by Hindu countries with a ruler following the Buddha cult, or by Fetishist ones that follow Buddhadharma. [Obviously the Hindu Buddha cult is redundant in this Monument, as it can be used by Dharmic religion groups, but we wanted to show this fix we’ve done in this pic.]



To end with the Oceania continent, we’ve added here its second monument, the settlement of Nan Madoll. We wanted this to work as a kind of race prize and reward for colonizing the Pacific islands, so because of that the nice modifiers for colonization, coupled with the Yearly Navy Tradition one.



That’s mostly all for today! Because I want to make a last announcement: Paradox Tinto will be joining the Grandest Lan event with a Dev (Dream) Team! Probably we will be beaten badly by everyone else in the game, but at least it will probably be fun.

Next week we will come back to the new African content, and my colleague Ogele will be talking about Mutapa and Kilwa new missions, among other things. I’ll be reading your feedback along this week, see you!

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!