Today I want to present to you the upcoming content for our Northern Europe Focused DLC. Yes, you heard it right, the next Immersion Pack is about the Baltic and Scandinavian countries! Sorry to everyone who was wishing for an Atlantis DLC :p
But before I get started with it, I want to share with you what we learned from the Origins DLC and the free content alongside it, so you can get a general idea of what the design of this DLC and Patch 1.34 will be like:
Branching missions are quite a success, and players are appreciating the flexibility of this new design. Because of that, you can expect that we continue with this philosophy for the Baltics.
Gaining Development from buildings was an interesting experiment. Although it was not as overpowered as many players have claimed, its snowball effect is definitely not something we will continue with.
Special units are one hell of a problem child to balance around. The Cawa units have shown that they have their niche, but they never really made it to become something of a backbone of your forces. While this is not necessarily tragic in Ethiopia’s case as the Cawa fulfill their role, it shows that we should dare to be more experimental with it.
The Mali experience is probably the most polarizing one in EU4 - you either love the punches given to you by the game, or you absolutely despise the rebel spam. In all honesty, we do enjoy having tags in the game which are more painful to navigate with. With that being said, in the Baltic DLC we want to have a similar on-the-edge experience for one of our nations, but not in the form of rebel spams. How this can be achieved - and if it will be achieved in the first place - is still an open question though.
The estate privileges and the new formables which came with the free content patch have been received very positively too - especially the Religious Diplomats. So we want to continue this trend of adding region specific content to the DLC, while more common additions - like estate privileges or government reforms - will be part of the free patch.
Speaking of the free patch: I know that there are people who do not care too much about the content of the Immersion Pack. Because of that, the end of every “Mission Tree Dev Diary” will also have a section addressing free content or balance changes concerning countries outside of the DLC’s scopes for Patch 1.34.
With that being said, let’s get started with the content reveal! But first, as usual, take into account that this content is currently under development and unpolished, so there will be placeholder art, typos, tweaked numbers, etc. before the release version.
“Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.” - Voltaire
“Prussia was hatched from a cannon-ball.” - Napoleon Bonaparte
“I promise the chastity of my body, and poverty, and obedience to God, Holy Mary, and you, to the Master of the Teutonic Order, and your successors, according to the rules and practices of the Order, obedience unto death.” - Oath sworn upon admission into the Teutonic Order
As you can guess, the first dev diary is about our favorite space marine nation, the Teutonic Order, and to some extent, Prussia.
Requested by Duke Conrad of Mazovia in 1225, the Teutonic Order conquered the land of the Old Prussians, converting them to Christianity while the Prussian lands got Germanized over the two centuries. As the Teutonic Order was eventually conquered and vassalized by the Poles, secularized into Prussia and inherited by the Hohenzollern, the mission tree of the Order is less about recreating history and more about the “what if”.
And the many question marks of their mission tree show it: The Teutonic Mission Tree has only 6 missions you can do from the get-go, which handle the very basics of the Order’s needs: gain protection from Poland, ally (and vassalize) the Livonian Order, build to force limit and of course handle the Prussian Confederation - which has become its own little disaster: Note: the way it works is still the same as it is right now in EU4. Just the first event which gives your burghers a ton of land has been moved from a random event into one triggered by the disaster. Without the DLC you will have a decision to end the disaster, while with it the mission “Handle the Confederation” will finish it.
The mission “Seek Imperial Protection” is about joining the HRE. As you are surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, it is only natural that you want to find a way to protect yourself from these two. The Emperor will of course receive the corresponding event to it too. Note: The Emperor will receive this event if you join the HRE through the HRE menu instead of the event - and they can kick you out if you are on the Emperor’s bad side.
The Emperor will most likely choose to accept the Order in the Empire - but under the heavy restrictions that internal wars within the Empire are forbidden. Of course you can choose to reject this… A lot of guides will probably have to be rewritten now as the HRE is no longer a viable expansion path in the early game.
The mission “Defeat Poland”, which can be finished by either conquering 4 provinces of Poland or by defeating 3 Polish armies in battle, will unlock the rest of your mission tree. You have the choice of two rather big paths for your country. You either can choose the Prussian path, which is the more historical (as historical as it can get with a Teutonic Order repulsing their doom) choice, and the Crusader path, which will let your order become more zealous in the Catholic faith than ever before, but the idea of a “Prussia” or “Reformation” becomes alien to you.
Let us start with the Prussian one. Taking this path will change your mission tree substantially: The Prussian path is mostly focusing on, well, becoming Prussia, and its role within the HRE, an improved military, Enlightenment and eventually crushing the Revolution. So if you take this path then expect to have a more long term campaign as your missions will mirror the ones of Brandenburg’s Prussia.
You might notice that there are still Branching Missions left even after taking one path. These missions are your “Path of Expansion” basically, as your Teutonic Prussia does not need to have goals of expansion like its historical counterpart had.
Completing the mission “The Order and the Empire” will grant you yet another choice of what path you want to follow: If you take either of the two HRE paths (Holy Roman Diplomacy and German Conquest) and the Emperor forbid you to declare wars on HRE members until you become Prussia, you will get the following event: You will form a Catholic Prussia within the borders of the HRE, becoming a Teutonic Bishopric, a new government reform for a Catholic Theocratic Prussia.
Now let us go through the three different paths swiftly:
The German Conquest path has missions which are all about the pure conquest of Germany. To be frank, there is not much to tell you about these missions as they are your classical “seek and conquer” missions in the HRE you are all familiar with. “An Empire of Iron and Blood” is, you guessed it, the final mission which basically asks you to conquer Germany. It is basically a glorified “Form German Nation” decision, but you get a nice +25% Governing Capacity modifier in your capital if you have one of the Prussian government reforms as your government type, at top of forming Germany (you receive this triggered province modifier as your final reward in all three of these paths).
The Holy Roman Diplomacy path is a little bit of a different story though: Unlike the conquest missions, in the Diplomatic missions your goal is to actually become the Holy Roman Emperor yourself and unite Germany not through iron and blood, but through letters and words. In order to achieve this you will need to be elevated to a higher position than just the one of a simple bishopric. Fortunately, the mission “Subjugate Brandenburg” will help you with that. By vassalizing Brandenburg, you get the mission reward which enables a casus belli against the Emperor as well as three decisions, which you can use to transfer the electorship from your subject to yourself. Purchasing the Electorship will require you to offer 6000 Ducats to the Emperor - while having no deficit nor loan. Requesting the Electorship will require you to be best friends with the Emperor, which means 190 opinions and 80 trust with the Emperor. The Emperor will also gain a substantial amount of favors with you, so keep this in mind. Gaining the Electorship through war is also an option as you can see in the image above. Finally, what is missing out is a decision which you can see when you become emperor and you have an elector as your subject, which allows you to usurp the Electorship, transferring it from your subject to yourself.
The mission “Become an Elector” will instantly elevate you to the rank of a kingdom - an Archbishopric of Prussia so to say.
Of course being an elector alone won’t make you an emperor though, so eventually you have to secularize your country. If you reach level 4 of the government reforms, have 2 stability, reach tech 10 and Protestantism has spawned, you are able to complete the mission “Secularize Prussia”, giving the following event: Additionally, the mission will also disable all rebels spawned from seizing land from the Clergy.
The final missions of this batch revolve around the Religious League War, becoming the Emperor of the HRE, and eventually revoking the privilege of the HRE.
But what if you don’t want to deal with the HRE whatsoever? What if you always wondered “what would have happened if Prussia was neither inherited by the Hohenzollern or remained a subject of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?”
For that we have the final path, which is the one of the Prussian Kingdom: These missions will set you on a conquest spree against Poland and Lithuania over and over. While they seem like another bunch of familiar conquest missions, they do have their highlights though. The mission “Push into Ruthenia” unlocks two unique estate privileges which stand in direct opposition to each other: The “Issue the Anti-Heresy Act” is a simple Clergy privilege which increases your missionary strength against heretics by 2%, while decreasing the Burghers Loyalty Equilibrium by 10%. The Burghers’ privilege “Grant Orthodox Autonomy” on the other hand is a little bit more intriguing. Coptic has been added here because Orthodox and Coptic faiths have this “Tolerated Heresy” relationship with other Christian denominations. In the context of the mission it might not make much sense, but from a gameplay perspective I think the privilege should behave the same for both.
The other highlight of this path is the “Fortify the Borders” and “Fortify Dnieper” missions which give a modifier to up to a limited number of fort buildings in the highlighted provinces, which makes the maintenance of a fort virtually non-existent. Your missions will give you claims in all of Poland, Moldavia and Ruthenia. In other words, you become the Prussian equivalent of the PLC.
But enough of Prussia for today. Let us talk about a more Catholicism orientated Teutonic Order playthrough: With the Crusader Path you return to your original purpose, which is Christianizing the pagans and heathens, but also to crush any kind of heresy you encounter. If you want to paint the political map with your name and the religious name in yellow, this path is perfect for you!
The most left-part of your mission tree will focus on expanding into Russia, ending the Third Rome and healing the Schism between Catholic and Orthodox faiths, though as you are not the Papal Authority but just an Order of crusading knights, your version of the “Healed the Schism” might be not as convincing.
The second and third columns are all about mad conquest into the east, pushing into Hordes territory and converting the steppes. The highlight here is the mission “The Ruthenian Plains”, which unlocks a new government reform for you! Your ruler gains a new, fancy title too!
While your Holy Order is conquering eastwards and facing more and more hordes, your fourth column of missions evolves and adapts your military to the environment of the steppes. Each military mission is about either reforming your military by achieving certain amounts of Army Professionalism (or Army Tradition), by winning battles, and later on by recruiting more cavalry units.
The military missions give a permanent modifier which makes your army more and more proficient at using cavalry. The next military mission will then replace the previous perma-modifier with a stronger one until you complete the mission “Establish a Great Cavalry” which gives the final version of this modifier: In easier terms: the more you are fighting the hordes of Central Asia and the more you crusade the steppes, the more your army becomes reliant on horses. And these military missions are basically “leveling your cavalry up”.
Eventually, with the mission “Crusaders of the Steppes” your Order will reflect the changes they did undergo through: On a final note: razing works a little bit differently for a “Theocratic Horde” such as your Teutonic Holy Horde. You can only raze heathen and heretic provinces, and you gain 1 Devotion for each 3 development razed. Additionally, because you get this reform rather late, the decrease of the Monarch Power starts at base tech 12 instead of 3.
That was all for the Teutonic Mission Tree!
Finally a quick word for something we want to address in the Free Patch of 1.34: with the buffs of Catholicism, the religions of Protestantism, Reformed and Anglicanism have fallen off a bit in their attractiveness.
Because of that we have decided to not necessarily buff these religions, but to add more appealing options to them instead: First thing: Anglicanism Aspects have been reworked. The Mercantilism and Cash actions have been combined into one. Then, Divorcing your Consort will now grant 12 ADM/DIP/MIL power per missing stat (so this means the worse your consort the more monarch power you get from divorcing, so a 6/6/6 gives 0 monarch power while a 0/0/0 would give 72 in each category). Marrying a Local Noblewoman will increase your chance of a new Heir by 100% for 15 years (you can imagine how this works). The Stability action now grants some Legitimacy (or its equivalent).
The new aspects are ‘Encourage Innovativeness’, which increases said Innovativeness Gain by 50% and Reform Progress by 15% for 15 years (hover of the aspect to read its tooltip, there you can find the values given). Then ‘Deport Heretics’ is kinda self explanatory. It also increases Settler Chance by 10% and Religious Unity by 10% for 15 years. ‘Reformation Diplomacy’ is a little bit of a “Religious Diplomats, but for the Reformation”, and ‘Militarize Religious Icons’ gives some army quality. However, ‘Militarize Religious Icons’ costs 200 Church Power instead of 100 like the rest.
That was it for today! Changes to Protestantism and Reformed confessions will be addressed with the next Dev Diary, as well as the content for the Livonian Order.
Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Development Diary! This week I will be presenting the Roadmap we have been preparing in the last weeks, giving a guide to some of the content that we are working on and will be showing you all in the coming months.
But first, you have probably noticed that I’m not Johan, who is traditionally in charge of doing this. That’s because I’ve been recently promoted to Content Design Coordinator here in Paradox Tinto, so, as the position speaks for itself, I’ll be coordinating the new content created. Therefore, Johan thought it would be a good idea [s]to take some boring work out from him[/s] to delegate this task to me.
On to the Roadmap. We will be sticking to the development principles we outlined in the past year. Those are:
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.
At the moment, we’re quite satisfied with the current state of the game and we think it’s in a much better spot than one year ago. We’ve not only addressed a lot regarding the Leviathan issues (shivers), but have fixed a lot of legacy bugs (as we discussed on previous DDs), reducing our backlog of existing issues and starting a rebalancing of some parts of the game that were required and requested.
So, what can you expect from the next update (which will be version 1.34 of the game)? We will still be working on reducing our bug-count and improving game performance as much as possible. From a gameplay perspective, Gnivom will continue making improvements to AI, and we are already addressing the combat balance (topics that will be discussed in future DDs, so you can give us feedback about it after we’ve finished a first round of internal tests). We’re going to do some rebalancing of Idea groups (nothing groundbreaking, but trying to diversify a bit their usefulness). Also, we want to keep improving the Religion balance, making some changes to a few of them to make them attractive enough, as we have done in the last two updates.
Regarding the new content, we believe that we need to improve the state of the base game before we start introducing more major reworks. We also think that we have room to keep expanding already existing features. So, in that sense, you can expect that there will be more government reforms, more estate privileges, and a few more goodies here and there. But our main focus in this field will be to continue improving and developing mission trees and other accompanying features in regions considered a bit backwards content-wise. And, speaking of, we’ve got a clue of the area where we will be focusing from next week’s DD:
And that’s all for today! We’re very excited about the new upcoming content, and I promise you that my colleague Ogele will show you more detailed content next Tuesday. Stay tuned, see you!
Hello everyone, and welcome back to EUIV Dev Diaries! It’s been a while since the last one, but now we think it is due time to address a 1.33 Update Retrospective, and talk a bit with you about what we’ve been doing, and the topics concerning the community.
In the past month, since the 1.33 Update full release, the Team has been working mostly on the Post Release Support (PRS) of it. You may have noticed that our process in the Bug Reports subforum has changed a bit, and that the QLOC Team that gives us external QA support is directly addressing tickets, although the person in charge of it is AldathPDX, our QA Project Coordinator. Devs aren’t going to disappear from the subforum, though; we will still be going to interact directly with the reports when needed, but this way we’re becoming more efficient in what we really want to focus on - improving the state of the game. Speaking of QA, we have opened a position for an Internal QA Tester, as you may know. If you want to join us at Paradox Tinto, and you think you have the requirements for it, you can apply to it here!
Regarding 1.33 PRS, we decided to prioritize the usually tricky and hard-to-catch issues of OOS and CTD for the 1.33.3 patch released last week. We really wanted to focus on these issues, as we shared the concerns about MP games becoming more unstable. And, precisely because of this, we also decided not to introduce gameplay changes in this patch, as we preferred to release the most stable version possible, and fixing and testing other issues may have delayed this patch even further. We know this may be controversial, but we think it’s the most beneficial course of action for the game at this moment.
This doesn’t mean that changes are set in stone, as we want to continue gathering feedback from the community. We have to say that we are pretty happy with the results of the 1.33 Open Beta that was handled in the month prior to the release. We fixed a lot of issues thanks to the direct feedback gathered from you, the players, and we were able to make some further tweaks and changes quickly thanks to this. We think this has been a useful tool, and we’re open to using Open Betas again for future updates.
Going back to the gameplay changes topics, there are a couple that we know have been concerning the community in the past weeks: Combat changes, and allied AI behavior. The last one is more related to the kind of situation that may appear after improving it: now the AI acts on its own interests, which may not be the player’s, and that are different from how it behaved previously. This is something that happened in a few fields when improving AI for 1.33 Update, and that we rollback while developing it; but sometimes, this kind of behavior appears. We will be targeting AI again in the following months, so your game experience is quite valuable about this point. About the former, well, we already said that we wanted to “shake” a bit how Combat works, and our position is that we want extra feedback before committing to new changes. So, please, we want some constructive feedback in this thread regarding both topics, with your opinion on what works/what doesn’t, to further improve the gameplay experience (note: posts of the type “these changes are bad, just revert to previous version” are much less useful for us than those tackling the current situation and suggesting further changes for improvement).
The other big gameplay topic we addressed in 1.33 was rebalancing and adding a some extra content for the Eastern Asian regions, specifically on the Empire of China and Mandate of Heaven mechanics. We’re quite content with the outcome, as we were able to improve those in the Open Beta, and the issues we’ve been fixing regarding it in the PRS are not very concerning. Anyway, again, further suggestions are welcome, although more on the topic of polishing balance changes, than in adding more content, as we have started to move on to new things.
So yes, we’re already working on new content to be added to another new update! We’ve been spending some development time in the last weeks planning that, so because of it we’ve been a bit more ‘shy’ here. And now we have good and bad news. Good news is that we’re also recruiting another Content Designer for the studio! So, if you’re interested, you can apply here. The bad news is that you will have to wait a bit longer to take a look at the new content, as we’re in a very early development phase. In two weeks, after Easter vacation is over, we’ll present you the Roadmap for the new content, and we’ll start communicating again on a weekly basis.
That’s all for now! We hope to receive detailed feedback from you from 1.33, to keep working on it, as we’ll be reading your comments. See you!
Today we released a small hotfix for Europa Universalis IV addressing a few crash issues as well as some Out of Sync problems in multiplayer games.
According to all our testing, save files from 1.33.2 should be compatible, but it's never a guarantee. You can read how to revert your game version here!
1.33.3 Patchnotes ################### # Usermodding ################### # Other - Fixed game crash when mod doesn't have MAX_WARSCORE defined.
################### # Bugfixes ################### - Game crash after trying to use Draft Transport Ships options when at full naval capacity. - Game crash when hovering the mouse over a huge amount of ship stacks. - Fixed OOS related with death of rulers being also leaders.
Known issues: - There is an issue whith random crashes in multiplayer for MacOS. If you experience this - a bug report would be helpful - There are still some unidentified Out of Sync problems in multiplayer. If you experience them please submit a bug report.
Europa Universalis IV: Guns, Drums and Steel Volume 3 is the third metal tinged music pack, mixing genres and themes inspired by the Europa Universalis franchise. This collection contains 12 alternative metal songs, all written and arranged by Kasper Lindgren, and each with a touch of Nordic folk influence.
This music pack is included in the Europa Universalis IV Expansion Subscription
The time has finally come to release 1.33 to the world. This is the exact same build that's been up on the open beta for the last couple of weeks, and the version that's going live is 1.33.2 following the feedback we've received during the testing phase.
Save files from 1.32.x SHOULD be compatible with 1.33.2 - although we can never guarantee it. We always recommend that you revert your game version to finish any ongoing saves before updating.
################### - Added a new reform for the Celestial Empire, which allows the Emperor to convert tributaries into vassals at the cost of Mandate per Development. Subjects of the Tributary become independent. - Added 15 new custom nation ideas. - Added 8 new Custom Nation colors.
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# Gamebalance
# Economy - Trading range no longer extended by fleet basing rights, but is by non-independent subjects. - Vassals and marches don't extend trading range, but PUs and client vassals/marches do.
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# Governments - Becoming the new Celestial Empire grant the new Emperor -10% Land Maintenance, +12 Land Force Limit and +15% Manpower Recovery Speed in order to help the AI to unite China. - Independent Daimyos lose their government reform should they become subjects of a non-Shogun country. - Re-added the "Tribal Identity" government reform for natives. - The Chinese Kingdom government reform now gives -100 opinion of countries of the same culture and culture group. - The Great Mongol Horde government gives now +50% Cavalry to Infantry Ratio instead of 25% so you are no longer locked to be Tengri to enjoy 100% Cavalry fun.
# Religion - Base Harmony gain has been reduced to 0.25 while Harmony loss during harmonization has been increased to 3.25. - Confucian countries get +1 Harmony scaling with Religious Unity (100% Unity = +1 Harmony). - New events for the Alcheringa religion have been added, which allow the country to unlock the Dreaming Stories even without having access to the necessary missions. - Reworked the Harmonization modifiers, allowing players to harmonize religions in quick succession without suffering horrendous penalties. Also buffed the positive harmony modifiers in order to make Confucian more competitive against other religions. - The Yanzhou province has now the Temple of Confucius triggered province modifier if Leviathan is disabled, which gives +0.25 Yearly Harmony, +0.25 Yearly Prestige and +25% Religious Unity as long both the province and its owner are Confucian. - The modifiers from the harmonized religions have been buffed.
# Units - Fire and Shock pips now affect morale damage as well. - Overlord naval force limit numbers changed from flat to percentage. - Smolensk Units now prefer to display artillery in their stack (similar how Poland shows cavalry if their stacks have cavalry). - The Revolutionary Guard now has -50% Regiment Drill Loss. - Backrow troops now take 40% of the regular morale damage.
# Other - Being over governing capacity will no longer decrease the Tribal Development Growth. - Stated but no full cored provinces now have a governing cost of 50% instead of 25%. - Council of Trent concludes with the majority vote. - Being a Hegemony now decreases the opinion of other countries around you by 50 instead of 100. - Centralize State now decreases State Governing Cost by 25%, and now affects only the state, not the whole country, while State Maintenance is reduced by 20%. It also increases the Local Prosperity Growth by 0.1, while the action now costs 50 ADM. - Centralize State Governing Reform now costs 50 Reform Progress instead of 100 due to the newly added Admin cost. - Expand Infrastructure now costs 50 ADM, and reduces governing cost by 10% + 15 Governing Cost flat. It also now buffs the province in every aspect like for example decreasing local development cost by 5%, Monthly Autonomy by -0.005, Local Goods Produced Modifier by 5%, etc. - Reduced the manpower, sailors and force limit bonuses granted by colonies by 25%.
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# AI
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# Economy - Fixed Celestial Emperor advisor budgeting issue. - Rewrote AI savings logic. - Colonial nations spend more money on colonists. - Increased AI minimum colonization budget. - Reworked AI for mothballing forts, and made rich countries more likely to have at least level 1 advisors.
# Other - AI no longer tries to retreat to mountains if those are in neutral territory. - The Ethiopian AI will now prefer provinces of its state religion to move their capital. - Tuned down fort building, especially when on border and next to existing fort. - Added an ai_importance value to the decisions for forming Prussia in order to teach the AI that Prussia is op and should be formed if possible. - Made AI consider flanking again. - AI better understands importance of generals' pips. - AI now considers units' drill before starting a battle. - Fixed bug where AI thought 'coordinated attack' and instead sent individual armies to die. - Fixed issue that AIs in debt didn't convert provinces. - Fixed multiple issues with scripted ai_army, one of which made it not work at all. It can now also be debugged with the 'mapmode armyeval' command. - AI better at consolidating regiments before battle. - AI can now declare wars when overextension is up to 50% (previously 25%), but only if already coring everything. - AI considers nearby units more when considering a battle. - AI will now seize land from estates more often, but raise army/fort maintenance. - Added AI priority to a few conquest missions of France and the Ottomans in order to ensure them prioritizing their missions. - Better at taking home troops overseas (instead of disbanding). - Build a bit more universities. - Made AI Care about Beijing, Nanjing, Canton for mandate. - Made AI Care about corruption for mandate. - Celestial Emperor more aggressive towards countries that refuse to pay tribute. - Colonial Nations without debt are now likely to spend all subsidies they get on colonists. - Colonial subjects will care more about wars against countries in their colonial region. - Coordinated offensives will now focus on committed sieges. - Fixed AI army ignoring terrain for some threat evaluation. - Fixed bug that AI sometimes ignored armies with insufficient troops for siege. - Fixed bug that caused exiled armies to behave erratically. - Fixed bug that made AI less afraid of non-rebel armies, when it should be rebel armies. - Fixed bug that made AI not declare easy wars as often. - Fixed bug that made colonial nations not colonize islands in their own colonial region. - Fixed issue where armies would refuse to do things nearby, because it was assigned to a region far away. - Fixed issue with colonists not being recalled when they should be. - Fixed issues sometimes preventing AI upgrading forts to higher level. - Fixed issues with colonial budgeting (causing bankruptcy spirals). - Fixed that autonomous sieging could go back and forth between provinces that were flipped back by a fort. - Improved AI understanding of native uprising risks (less Africans getting stack wiped taking a shortcut). - Improved AI handling of estate privileges. - Improved army quality calculations. - Improved handling of corruption. - Improved handling of inflation. - Improved logic for where to build forts. - Improved national focus (mana) handling. - Improved the AI decision making for Orthodox events. - Increased budget priority for saving money. - Made AI less eager to demand return core treaty unless it likes the benefactor. - Made AI less eager to go over naval force limit. - Made AI less likely to mothball forts when risky. - Lowered AI priority on building great projects over other buildings. - Lowered AI safety margin when attacking to compensate for other fixes. - Made AI aware of risk of rebels spawning in a province. - Made AI chase your small armies in more cases. - Made all Chinese countries want to conquer the 3 Mandate cities, if they have 1 already. - Made AI armies which are afraid of enemies, prefer safe terrain even more. - Made AI more likely to enforce rebel demands (peace treaty) in the rare case that it can do so. - Made AI more likely to promote cultures (with large development). - Reduced maximum budget for subsidies to the 10% of income. - Several fixes and improvements regarding advisors. - Somewhat more competent at naval invasions for large empires. - Subjects with loans will keep a standing army again (although it will be small). - The Ethiopian AI will no longer move its capital while being at war. - Tweaked AI siege priorities. - Very small countries with scary neighbors will now keep a larger army when at peace. - Made small AI countries more careful with Seize Land. - Made AI less likely to split armies in threatening places. - Made AI more happy to hunt nearby armies. - Army AI only takes its own armies on fleets. - Fixed small AIs militarizing also when Rights of Man DLC disabled. - Improved Strong Duchies AI.
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# Interface
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# Icons/Art - Added icon for "statewide_governing_cost". - Added icon for "monthly_piety_accelerator". - Updated the flags of Yeren (now Xibe) and Donghai (now Nanai). - The Dreaming Stories of the Alcheringa no longer have all the same icon. - Added new icon for alert "GREAT_PROJECT_CAN_BE_UPGRADED". - Added new icons for "free_land_leader_pool" "free_navy_leader_pool". - Fixed .zip file that was showing inquisitor instead of master of mint. - Added new scrollbar track for timeout date bar. - Changed Jewish rebels flag. - Added new map mode icons for "religion" and "religious leagues". - Buda Castle GFX fixes. - Added new icon for "Torah aspects can be selected". - Fixed Polynesian Masters of Mint share the same icon with Inquisitors. - Fixed some Visual artifacts in the country view windows.
# Tooltips - Added a tooltip mention for the Free Cities during the Tutorial. - Improved the tooltip for the privilege "Expansionist Zealotry" in order to make it clear that both morale modifiers don't cancel each other out. - The tooltip of the requirement of the mission "Expand Overseas" has been improved in order to show that you need 5 provinces in 3 different Trade Company Regions. - The name of the decision "Confederal Kingdoms: Arrange Internal Marriage" has been shortened. - Improved the devastation map mode tooltips. - Tooltip fix for new Reform's Diplo Action.
# Unitmodels
# Other - Added alert for when a monument can be upgraded. - Added more information to the naval quality ledger. - Removed message for losing a claim if the province is already a core of yours. - Stopped parliament background behaving like a giant button. - Don't get idle merchant alerts if you can't send them anywhere.
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# Usermodding
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# Effects - Added exile_consort_as effect which exiles current consort. - Added set_consort effect which set new consort of the king.
# Modifiers - Added a "Piety Accelerator" modifier that accelerates your piety towards (or away from if negative) Legalism or Mysticism, depending on where your piety is to start with. - Added relation_with_same_religion and relation_with_heathens (used the same way as relation_with_heretics). - Added is_marine_modifier / is_banner_modifier / is_streltsy_modifier / is_cossack_modifier added. - Added land_forcelimit and naval_forcelimit static modifiers added to give bonuses per x amount of force limit - Added new modifiers free_land_leader_pool and free_navy_leader_pool to work in conjunction with free_leader_pool to determine how many free leaders each country gets. - Added relation_with_same_culture modifier. - Added relation_with_same_culture_group modifier. - Added relation_with_accepted_culture modifier. - Added relation_with_other_culture modifiers. - Added defines BACK_LINE_MORALE_DAMAGE_TAKEN_MODIFIER and BACK_LINE_STRENGTH_DAMAGE_TAKEN_MODIFIER which allows to adjust artillery after recent changes.
# Triggers - Added a "trade_node_value = <value>" trigger. - Added a "num_of_provinces_owned_or_owned_by_subjects_with = {}" trigger scope. - Added on_capital_moved on_action which is triggered when capital is moved. - Added on_institution_embracement on_action which is triggered when institution is embraced. - Added on_national_focus_change on_action which is triggered when national focus is changed. - Added on_war_ended with FROM being the loser and ROOT being the winner. - Added triggers uses_meritocracy, uses_horde_unity and uses_republican_tradition.
# Other - Added the "disables_nobility" government attribute which now disables the Nobles Estate. As a result, Parliaments no longer disable the Nobles Estate on its own anymore. In the context of the vanilla game, however, nothing changes as every government reform with a Parliament has now a "Disables Nobility Estate." trait too. - Added on_actions for Centralize State and Expand Infrastructure. - Due to modders request, the new government reforms have been sorted into the government_reforms_monarchies and government_reforms_tribes files.
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# Script
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# Decisions - Added a new decision, which allows Muslim countries without the Dhimmi estate to gain access to said estate. The decision will replace the Brahmins with the Dhimmi in case of an Indian country taking this decision. - Forming a nation in the New World as a former colonial nation will no longer remove all cores in the Old World. Nations from the Old World, which tag switch into New World tags will still release their former tag in the Old World though. - Forming the Roman Empire will now convert all of your culture group to the Roman culture instead of just your primary culture. - The decisions "Confirm Thalassocracy" trigger tooltip now takes so much space anymore. - A new decision has been added, which allows Korea, Tibetan (the whole Culture Group) and Vietnamese countries to Sinicize their culture, changing the primary culture and all of its provinces to a custom culture, which is part of the Chinese culture group. - The Vietnamese culture has been moved into the Mon-Khmer culture group. Also a new decision has been added, which allow Dai Viet to Sinicize their culture, changing the primary culture and all Vietnamese provinces to a custom Vietnamese culture, which is part of the Chinese culture group. - Forming Ethiopia no longer requires you to be Coptic. - Forming Manchuria as a Tributary subject now triggers an event for the overlord, which removes 50 Mandate (Legitimacy or Horde Unity if the overlord is not the Emperor of China) and releases Manchuria. - Forming Yuan will now Sinicize the Mongol cultures (Khalkha, Korchin, Mongol and Oirat). - Improved the tooltip for the "Adopt Manchu Identity" decision, showing user how many core Jurchen / Manchu provinces of the required 20 user already have.
# Events - Ayutthaya's events now address your current ruler instead of having talking about a king which never existed for you. - France will no longer declare war upon Burgundy during the Burgundian Inheritance Incident while France is already at war with Burgundy's overlord. - Increased the inflicted inflation from Mali's Pilgrimage event chain from 0.2 to 0.25 per Trade Income compared to Total Income. - Added event options to the Ming Crisis disaster events, which allow the player to switch the tag to the Chinese minor tags. - Fixed a tooltip issue for the country who receives the gold from the Mansa during the Pilgrimage event chain. - Fixed issues with the Congolese events, which would put players without Origins at a high disadvantage. - Joan II de Trastámara is now the same person for both Navarra and Aragon. If he dies in either country then he also dies in the other. - Mali can no longer give itself inflation if they move their capital to a region their Mansa is about to visit during the Privilege event chain. - Pirates with the reform "War Against the World Doctrine" now stay true to their word and will no longer get the "Slave Trader" event. - Removed the stability gain from the event "The Third Temple" when the player decides to delay the reconstruction of the temple. - Semi Randomly generated advisors now allow Muslim countries to actually get a Parsi Zoroastrian advisor as it was originally intended. - The AI now chooses the options of the republican events more wisely in order to maintain a high amount of Republican Tradition. - The Center of Revolution can no longer spawn within the Celestial Empire as the Emperor of China cannot go through the Revolution Disaster. - The Jewish event "Build the Third Temple" now triggers through the decision only and can now be fired more than once per game. - The Mali Pilgrimage event will no longer periodically let the player know that the Mansa has arrived in their region. The message was clear after the first time already. - The Mali event "The many options of European Trade Outposts" now has an option, which can be always chosen. - The Polish event "Elective Monarchy in Poland" will now always trigger regardless if Poland has already enacted four privileges for the Nobility. Should Poland have Golden Liberty revoked before they gain the Elective Monarchy then a noble privilege will be replaced with the Golden Liberty privilege. - The Polish events regarding the Elective Monarchy are no longer bound to the Polish culture but to the tag of Poland. - The Surrender of Maine event now has a custom casus belli, which acts as an usual Restoration of Personal Union cb for England, but is like a Reconquest cb for France. - The Swiss events about Calvin can now only trigger in the Age of Reformation in order to prevent him returning from his grave. - The event "Administrating A Tributary Network" requires 10 Tributary State when you have only Kingdom rank to fire. - The event "An important matter in sabbath" now gives +50 adm power if you have 3 stability / -100 adm power if you have -3 stability. It also no longer shows you that you have the Rights of Man DLC enabled. - The event "Dubious Spending Practices" will now properly increase the dev of the province of the corrupt advisor. - The event "Growing Imperial Influence" can now actually fire. - The event "Lost Animal" costs now 0.25 years of income in the first option instead of flat 50 Ducats. The second option now increases the Migration Cost by 50% instead of reducing it by 10%. - The event "Tribal allegiance" for the Mossi Confederal Kingdom will no longer trigger every 20 days until the end of the game. - The event "Where the Legend Begins" can no longer trigger if you have already the legendary location explored. - The event "Winter Siege" now triggers between November and April. - The event "[Root.GetName] Is in Debt!" for Private Enterprise Colonies reduces now corruption by -2 in the first option. - The options of the event "Ku Demands a Sacrifice" are now available even if you have -3 stability. - Increased the mean time to happen for the stability hit event of Maili's disaster by 100 days. - The Mutapan event "Regression of Zimbabwe" will no longer fire if the mission "Restore Zimbabwe" has been completed before. - The Polish event no longer removes the Command of the Military privilege as Poland cannot enact it. - The Third Temple event now puts the monument always on level 3. - Added go to buttons to the Ming disaster events. - Corrected a small event description error for the Korean event "Korea and the Rise of the Manchu". - Events which were locked behind Ming are now available to the Celestial Emperor (or to a Chinese country in the case the Celestial Empire ceased to exist). - Forming Manchuria will now trigger an event for Korea, which allows them to become the tributary of Manchuria in exchange for every province in the Korean peninsula hold by Manchuria. If Manchuria is controlled by a player then a second event will fire, which asks the player if they want to accept Korea as their tributary in the first place. - Halved the Mean Time to Happen for the event "The Fate of Neumark". - Revolution in a province will increase the local unrest by 0.25 per Absolutism instead of 0.5 local minimum autonomy. - The Napoléon event from the French Revolution disaster now spawns Napoléon as a competent general too when he becomes your ruler. - The event "A Helping Hand" now decreases Monument Upgrade Costs for 10 years instead of 5 year and gives now a level 2 Artist advisor with a discount. - The event "Earthquake destroys Lisboa" now adds 100 Devastation to Lisboa and decreases local goods produced by 25% instead of a flat 0.66. - The event "Mandukhai Khatun" can now properly trigger for Mongolia while they are a horde. - The event "Netherlands Declare Independence!" now has a second option, which allows you to play as them. Additionally, the event "Dutch Mobilization" gives them now 500 Ducats and a general with 80 army tradition in order for them to fight for their independence properly. - The "Convert Hagia Sophia into a Mosque" for owners of "Star and Crescent" has now the same effect as the event for the ones who don't have the DLC. - The event "Estate's Leadership Challenged" can no longer trigger for countries which are a junior partner.
# Ideas - Portugal's ideas have been rebalanced, making them more competitive compared to their neighbors. - The Plains Native Ideas no longer conflict with the Southeastern Woodlands Ideas. - The ideas of the Roman Empire have been buffed to get on par with the ideas of the Holy Roman Empire. - Finishing the Maritime Ideas gives now +25% Marine Force Limit. The Maritime/Economic Policy "The Recruitment Act" now gives +25% Marine Force Limit too instead of the previous 5%. - Moved the Marine Force Limit of the Maritime ideas from their Ambition to their second idea. The first idea now increases Trade Range by 25% and the ambition now increases Fleet Movement Speed by 1. - Quintupled the value of all ideas which increase the Marine Force Limit (Castile for example can now hire 25% of its force limit as Marines instead of 5%). - The "Grand Navy" idea of the Maritime Ideas now increases Ship Trade power Propagation by 25%. - The Espionage Ideas have been slightly reworked. "Claim Fabrication" is now the first idea, followed by the "State Propaganda" idea. The third idea, "Efficient Spies" now increases Siege Ability by 10%. The Advisor Cost reduction has been moved to the fourth idea, which is "Agent Training". - The Naval Idea "Press Gangs" now increases Marines Force Limit by +25% and the bonus idea of Naval Ideas gives now +15% Ship Disengagement Chance instead of +10% Marines Force Limit.
# Missions - Adal's mission "Subjugate Ajuuraan" now properly requests of Ajuuraan's states. - Added missing country shields for some British missions. - Adjusted Japanese missions in regarding the Kurils change. - Adjusted the estate requirements for some missions of the Mughals. - Castile now gains its PU CB against Portugal after the missions "Reclaim Andalucía" AND "Subjugate Navarra" are completed. - Chagatai and Yarkand have now access to the generic Tartar missions. - Ethiopia's mission "Conquer Adal" gives now a claim on the province Werder too. - Forming Rûm will now give access to the Ottoman missions. - Forming a new country while having the Alcheringa religion will no longer get your missions overridden with Alcheringa missions. - Kongo's mission "Absolute Rule" is no longer soft locked through the usage of Trade Companies. - The Ayutthaya mission "Populate <Capital>" can now be completed by either concentrating dev twice or by developing the capital five times. - The Ethiopian mission "Unite the Horn" no longer requires you to have the province Fazughli colonized. - The German mission "Concert of Europe" now has an alternative condition of having 2500 total development instead of having 75 Power Projection. - The Holy War cb from the generic Central African mission "Expand our Religious Views" gets no longer removed after the first month tick. - The Hungarian mission "Bibliotheca Corviniana" now upgrades the Bibliotheca Corviniana monument to Tier 1. - The Italian mission "Alpine Defenses" now allows to be completed when the required provinces have better forts than castles. - The Mali mission "Protect West African Trade" gives now the proper Global Trade Goods Produced modifier instead of the local one. - The Spanish mission "Recover Portugal" has been moved. It now requires the missions "Subjugate Navarra" and "Reclaim Andalucía" in order to be completed. Additionally, Castile / Spain has now access to the two generic European missions "Global Dominance" and "Faith's Bastion". They are NOT required for the Forever Golden achievement. - The Venetian mission "Expand The Doge's Palace" now also upgrades the Doge's Palace monument when Leviathan is enabled. - The Venetian mission "Expand The Doge's Palace" now improves the base tax of Venice when Leviathan is disabled. - The conquistador Hernan Cortés from the mission "Claim Hispaniola" has now his name back. - The mission "Construct the Kiel Canal" will now properly check if you are constructing the Kiel Channel monument when Leviathan is enabled. - The mission "Sankore University" can now be fulfilled when the Sanko Madrasah monument has level 3 reached too. - The native mission "Uniting the Tribes" can now be completed if you have 20 or more provinces. - Ming's missions are now available to countries which primary culture is of the Chinese culture group (with the Sinicized cultures as the exception). - Adjusted the Mongolian mission "Unite the Mongols" so that you don't get soft locked out of when you form Yuan with the new culture change. - All missions which have an average autonomy condition no longer consider autonomy of oversea provinces. - All vassalized countries from the Lübeck mission "Unite the League" will now become a historical friend of Lübeck. - Forming Punjab will no longer devolve your mission tree to the generic ones. - Missions which require you to concentrate development three times have now an alternative way to complete them due to the nerf Concentrate Development has received. - New World missions, which require you to not being tribal, can be completed while being a Horde. - The Japanese mission "Pacify the North" now gives claims on the whole Sakhalin island. - The Korean mission "Build to Force Limit" now revokes the "Inwards Perfection" estate privilege if done by a player. This change has been done due to the cooldown of the privilege, which would force players to wait 25 years before they can revoke the privilege on their own. - The Manchu mission "Invade Joseon" can now be completed when Korea is a tributary state. - The mission "L'État c'est moi" now checks for the average autonomy of your non-Oversea provinces instead of all your provinces. - Removed the power projection requirement for the Songhai mission "Take the Empire Title" as it could not really compare the power projection of Mali to Songhai and power projection is not the best for mission requirements due to their limited nature.
# Modifiers - The triggered province modifier "Paektu Mountain" of the Jianzhou province now requires you to own and have a core on Jianzhou and Gyeongseong. - The new Holder of the Mandate gets -0.1 Global Monthly Devastation in order to have an easier time maintaining the Mandate.
# Setup - Korean's heir Hyang Yi has gained +1 stat in every category and the capital Hanseong has gained +5/+6/+4 dev in order to make Korea a little bit more accurate. - Non-tributary subjects now join the wars of their overlord in the wars of the bookmarks (for example: all of France's vassals are now at war with England during the English-French Hundred Years War in 1447). - Added a birthday for the ruler of Morocco. - Added starting rulers for Wadai and Ogaadeen. - Added the Nivkh culture to the Kamchatkan culture group and changed the cultures of Nivkh and its provinces. - Assam has now the proper Indian unit types instead of the Chinese units. - Bunyoro now starts with the Acholi culture as an accepted culture. - Burgundy can no longer get rid of Charles. - Byzantium has now discovered the Mashriq in 1444. - Changed several province and capital names of the Manchuria region. - Changed the name of the province Kosti to Waylula. - Changed the setup of the owned provinces of the countries in the Manchu region. - Countries, which start with the "Rajput Kingdom" government reform while Dharma is inactive start now with a fallback government reform. - Ogaadeen now has cores on the provinces Degehabur and Werder. - The Kurils and Sakhalin (renamed into Enchiw) are now owned core provinces of Ainu. - The Yanzhou province is now a holy site of Confucianism. - The following countries have been renamed: "Donghai" into "Nanai", "Udege" into "Orochoni", "Yeren" into Xibe. - The province Deren (now called Tyr) has now the Amur Estuary, giving it +10 Local Trade Power. - The provinces Korofan, Medwa and Kobbe have now the Tunjur culture. - The provinces Qaraqorum and Sain Noyom have been swapped. Sain Noyon has been renamed into Bayankhongor. - The ruler of AQ has remembered that he is the older brother and is now 10 years older than his heir. - The ruler of Pegu has gained 10 years of life experiences. - Adjusted the Terra Incognita so that Ainu, Nivkh, Solon and Orochoni have finally an idea where their neighbors' provinces are located. Also, Solon has learned how to send ships to the sea too!. - Korchin now starts as a Tributary State of Ming in order to get not all of the Jurchen obliterated by Ming when they ally Korchin. - Passau now produces Salt instead of fish.
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Hello everyone, and welcome to another EUIV Dev Diary! Today we’ll be talking about more changes we’ve been doing for the 1.33 ‘France’ patch, one new concept that we’ve implemented called ‘Script Debt’, and the workflow behind bugfixing. So let's get started with my colleague @Ogele talking about the balance changes!
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Greetings everyone!
As you all are aware we have no precise, official “regional focus” for this patch unlike the other free patches such as 1.29 “Manchuria Update” or 1.27 “Poland Update”. While it means we haven’t created mission trees for a region, this at least allows us to concentrate on balancing existing content, adding Quality of Life changes and fine tuning some other areas of the world.
Starting with China, we received your feedback and implemented some changes which makes the unification of China a less tedious process for the non-horde Chinese tags. One of them is the addition of the following government reform for every Confucian Chinese which gets released by the Celestial Empire:
One huge problem with the released countries in China was that they tend to create hugboxes around them which prevented them from actually unifying China. In order to prevent this all the Chinese Kingdoms have a -100 Opinion penalty for fellow Confucian countries. At the same time, they also gain access to the Unify China casus belli, which received a substantial buff:
We were experimenting with giving every Chinese tag cores over the whole region, but this resulted in really awkward situations where a province had cores of like 8 different tags + these cores were too much of a freebie. By gaining the cores through occupation the process of conquering China feels more natural.
Here are some of the nightly results:
A natural occurring Qing, which we wanted to see too, sadly did not happen yet. However, we are pleased to see that a unified China is now more likely to happen.
Even if it happens through means we did not expect…
Apparently, in this timeline there was a Bengali dynasty in China…
Other changes we introduced is the inability for the Celestial Empire AI to make countries their tributaries, which have their capital in China, as it felt very immersion breaking to us when the Celestial Emperor blocked themselves in such a fashion.
We also made a small change to Korea too:
1. The Gyeongbok Palace no longer gives tech cost reduction. Instead, it now has the following modifiers:
2 .Their national idea “The Hangeul Alphabet” now gives -10% Tech Cost instead of -5%
3. The estate privilege “Inwards Perfection” gives now the following penalties / benefits:
It also ensures that the Korean AI is a diplomat or an administrator unless another nation holds one of their cores. This way you have an AI Korea which actually plays tall instead of blobbing into Manchuria, which wasn’t really liked by the community.
While we’re at the estate privileges: all privileges, which have modifiers scaling with the Crownland owned by the estate, now exempt the estate from the “Seize Land” action. This change allows you to have a little more control over who you seize the Crownland + makes these estate privileges a little bit more useful. Also, the “Increased Levies' ' estate privilege has been slightly buffed, giving now 33% increased Manpower Modifier at 100% Crownland instead of 25%.
One final balance change I want to address are the “Expand Infrastructure” and “Centralize State” features from Leviathan. Their goals were to enhance playing tall. While the idea was neat, we felt like these two buttons didn’t have the punch needed to be worth the attention. The issue with “Expand Infrastructure” was the relation of governing cost and manufactory slots: manufactories are useful in low dev provinces as they give a flat bonus, but a governing cost increase means a province is more expensive to hold which is why you don’t waste it for a benefit which could be accomplished by holding one additional 3 dev province with a manufactory. So the times where you would use this button would be if you want a province to have something like a rampart, which is a very niche situation at best. Because of that we have decided to give “Expand Infrastructure” some more power, which makes their cost worthwhile:
I want to point out that this is NOT the final version. We will take the Beta feedback into consideration for adjusting this feature.
Next point is the “Centralize State” button, which has one big issue: it competes with much more useful and global “Expand Administration” button from the government tab. To make “Centralize State” more viable, we have decided to change its identity a little bit by changing the governing cost from a flat reduction to a percentage reduction. We also added some other bonuses to the centralized state:
Here are a few other balance changes we have done for 1.33:
-Winter Palace’s modifiers have been reworked as they didn’t feel right for Russia and the seat of Peter the Great. Now it gives at level 3 the following modifiers: -Tibetan (just like Vietnamese and Korean) can now sinicize their culture and adopt a culture of the Chinese culture group. It should be noted here: we are using the Manchu way of doing this as the engine is way too outdated for dynamic culture groups unfortunately. -Syncretic religions now give the bonuses of the monuments of the secondary faith. Example: Oirat which has Sunni as Syncretic religion will be able to benefit from the Hagia Sophia. -Feudal Theocracies have access to the Divine Ideas Group instead of the Aristocracy ideas. -Muslim subjects will no longer enact “Guaranteed Dhimmi Autonomy” if their Muslim overlord has religious ideas. -Roman Empire’s ideas have been buffed to bring them on par with the ideas of the HRE. -Selling Crownland now requires you to actually have the 10% to sell. -Manpower, Sailors and Forcelimit granted by colonies are reduced by 25%.
That was all from my side! I wish you a nice week, and we will see you in the next DD!
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Alright, now @Pavía again in charge, into the workflow for this patch. When tackling 1.33 fixes, we obviously gave priority to bugs being reported after the 1.32.2 patch was released, and those that didn’t make the cut owing to not being implemented in time. In the Content Design Team we also addressed and discussed some balance changes we wanted to make for this patch, specifically for the Eastern Asia regions, as @Ogele has just pointed out. But we found that as the bugfixing process was going well, as the ‘Songhai’ patch had been much less troubling than the previous ‘Majapahit’ one, we had some development time at our disposal to go back, and try to fix even older script-related issues.
That is what we called ‘Script Debt’, following the ‘Tech Debt’ concept that was also addressed in older versions of EUIV (for 1.30 patch there were a lot of issues addressed this way, if you recall). So we focused for a few weeks on cleaning up all these older issues that for one or other reason hadn’t been solved yet, and trying to have as few remaining legacy problems from older versions as possible. We also cleaned and simplified some scripts that were a bit convoluted, something that we’ll continue doing in future versions when possible (because for the next patch we’ll be more focused on creating new content, as previously said).
What are the actual results of this work? So we've solved around 40 older script issues for this patch. And regarding all the bug fixes done, I’ll show you some pictures and metrics, as they may speak better of it than I:
Here you can see that we’ve solved over 400 reported bugs, reducing the total count by at least 100 bugs and issues for this patch alone, which puts the EUIV bug-count lower than any GSG game has been in the last decade, according to our metrics (yay!).
So, what can you expect from the team in the next months regarding this topic? Apart from developing new content, we’ll continue addressing Tech Debt, Script Debt, and QoL improvements; you can help us by posting this kind of problems in the Bug Reports subforum, as we keep a regular track of it. And if you have any suggestions for improving the state of the game that are not bugs, we will continue tracking the Suggestions subforum in that regard. Listening to the voices of players is important for the Tinto Team at this point of the development of EUIV, as we’re trying to polish the game as much as possible.
To finish, when can you expect the 1.33 patch to be released? Well, the good news is that we’re pushing it as an open beta this evening! We’ll keep it open for a couple weeks, and then we will release the full patch later in Q1, after the testing is done, and we’re sure that we’ve solved all the issues appearing in the open beta.
By the way, we noticed that we have an issue regarding the Linux version of the game that we’re already trying to fix, so those users should NOT opt-in into this open beta.
You’ll be able to take a look on the changelog along with the release of the open beta. See you, and we will be answering issues raised in this thread during the week!
Today I’ll talk about some of the many AI updates coming in the next patch, 1.33. At the end I’ll also mention some minor but impactful changes to the rules of land combat.
Our last major update, we shipped some AI improvements, but a few new issues slipped through as well. Two of those in particular (advisors and forts) were too complex to make it into any of the hotfixes. For 1.33, we have not only addressed those issues, but done a range of further AI fixes/improvements as well. Because of the large number of changes, some new AI issues will probably slip through this time as well. Our goal is to have a public beta for 1.33, which could help a lot with early feedback and time to address it before the final release.
Forts The issue introduced (or at least worsened) in 1.32 was that the AI deletes many of its forts, and seldom builds new. This was likely triggered by changes we did to tighten the AI’s budget, as it had had serious budget issues for a number of versions before that. Clearly we couldn't just revert the changes blindly. Instead I wanted to dig deeper and fix underlying issues with the AI's handling of forts.
For example, there has for a long time been a bug that caused large countries to only build level 2 forts. In simplified terms: When the AI "defense minister" considered upgrading a fort, it wanted to make sure it could afford upgrading all its forts to the same level, or it would only upgrade to a lower level. So it asked the AI "finance minister" if it can afford maintaining e.g. 10 level 4 forts, but the finance minister says no, reasoning that "you shouldn't need this much money for building one fort". So the AI was in a stalemate, where it could only build the lowest level of forts.
Another issue was fort mothballing. The AI would often mothball forts in a way that allowed players to blitz them.
The result after spending some time with this is an AI that seldom deletes any forts, often upgrades forts to higher levels, sometimes builds new forts (especially in strategic locations with good terrain), and is much more careful/intelligent with mothballing. Of course, the AI will still delete forts it really can't afford (such as QQ at game start), and it doesn't have human-level tactical or strategic understanding of fort positioning. But overall, I hope you will find it a big improvement :).
(All of these are level 8 forts, in an 1821 AI-only game. Maybe it’s a bit front-heavy…)
Advisors In 1.32 the AI rarely hires advisors, and often fires them as soon as they're at war. This too was the result of code intended to tighten the budget. Like with forts though, it turned out that there were other issues worsening the problem.
One such bug was that when deciding which mana it needed the most, two of them could tie for first place - causing the AI to pick the third (worst) type instead. This made the AI hire diplo advisors way too often. Another obscure bug was that if it took the AI too long to save up the money for the initial advisor cost, it could lose track of it, making the money "earmarked" but ever used.
In 1.33, the AI will usually keep a reasonable amount of advisors, often prioritizing military or admin. A reworked threshold system makes it not hire-and-fire advisors frivolously. AIs with Meritocracy will realize the importance of having enough advisors to keep it growing. With these improvements, and considering how it stacks with some Monuments and Estate Privileges, we've decided to remove the -20% Advisor Cost modifier for Lucky Nations. Most of them are doing more than fine.
Other budgeting Other areas where the AI sometimes didn't spend enough include colonists and missionaries. Colonial Nations and AIs with Colonialist personality in particular will spend a larger amount on colonization. One neat addition is that Colonial Nation subjects will now direct all received subsidies towards colonization, in addition to what they would otherwise have spent, unless they have loans. This lets their overlord (or anyone else ;)) make sure they put their colonists to work.
Peace-time armies are now also a greater priority for small nations, especially for those without powerful allies/guarantors. You should find for example uniting Ireland to be more challenging.
Now of course you may wonder, if all these things get more spending, won't the AI go into debt spirals again? It turns out there were a couple of places where spending could be cut: - Drilling armies: The AI now only does this only if it has a large budget surplus - Corruption: Sometimes it makes sense to get "free money" for corruption, but the AI overused that, and then found itself rooting it out at several times the cost. - Navy Force Limit: It makes sense for some AIs to go above Naval FL, but this has been reduced somewhat. - Consolidate Regiments: When the AI finds itself with troops it doesn't need at the moment, usually after a war or a battle with rebels, it will consolidate regiments. - Fort maintenance: Wait, didn't I say the AI is better at maintaining, building and upgrading forts? Sure. But in some cases, in particular poor OPMs with an expensive capital fort, mothballing it really can be worth it. - Inflation: By giving a higher prio to reducing inflation, many AIs reduce all expenses by several percent.
If these measures are not enough, when the AI goes into longterm deficits and debt, it will implement progressive austerity measures. Firing advisors, reducing army size, and even deleting forts. As far as I've observed, this only happens during/after severe crises, and works fairly well.
The budget is also significantly helped by increased crownland, which we'll get to later.
(16’th century Ethiopian budget, recouping after an expensive war. They’ll soon lower army maintenance and mothball a couple of forts to get a better surplus)
Monarch Power (mana) At release of 1.32, there was a major issue with AI mana spending, causing the AI to often fall behind in tech and/or ideas. This was made worse by how it interacted with the new institution tech cost, and by the issues with advisors mentioned above. Although a hotfix was issued including a fix to the main issue, we've spent more time looking at the AI's mana economy. The AI now: - better understands when to buy tech vs. ideas vs. other things. - uses more advisors (as mentioned before). - uses Estate Privileges for free mana. - better understands when to prioritize a certain mana, in terms of National Focus, Advisors, and Estate Privileges.
It also turns out that if you play a Republic, and especially with Plutocratic ideas, choosing randomly between the event options of those events can cause you to spend a majority of your ADM on boosting stability. We've gone through many of the events affecting Stability and/or Republican Tradition, and made the AI pick the better/safer option. Estates
When the Estates system was last redesigned, AI was written to interact with it. But that AI wasn't necessarily written/tested too carefully, and years of design changes and lack of proper attention have made it worse. It turns out that by making the AI play a fairly simple estates meta, but play it consistently, it gets quite a nice set of bonuses; from tax income and autonomy reduction, to mana; at very small cost. The AI will: - Seize Land even when it causes revolts (but only after maintaining troops and forts) - Occasionally Call Diet to temporarily increase Loyalty, although it doesn't usually try to complete it - Prioritize Privileges that give loyalty and mana - Sell Titles only when crownland is high and/or the money is badly needed
Naval Invasions 1.32 saw some fixes in this area. 1.33 will have a couple of further small improvements/fixes that should reduce friction for multi-continent empires in particular. For example: - Armies that have nothing to do are less likely to refuse an invasion mission - Invasions will no longer wait for faraway ships to help out, unless they are necessary
In one game, I actually saw AI Portugal conquering a third of India by 1700 or so, while also having colonies in the Americas and Africa. But in fairness, that is not a common sight. AI naval invasions will remain an Achilles’ heel.
Army Quality This is a major one. And huge thanks to [USER=1294106]@Tempscire[/user], who has helped me with running simulations, with mathematical analysis, and schooling me on how EU4 land combat actually works.
The question the AI is trying to answer here is whether to start a battle, or even a war. To do so, it must estimate the quality of troops. Basically: how many Swedish soldiers does it take to equal 1 Prussian soldier? Until 1.32, the AI did this by applying a series of modifiers, based on Discipline, Morale, etc., that were tuned on gut feeling. From 1.33 (and somewhat already from 1.32) we have proper math and simulations to back them up.
The AI now appreciates the value of morale more than before. It understands how a general’s impact on a battle depends on the terrain. It understands the interplay between e.g. Infantry Fire, Fire Pips of the Unit Type, Fire Damage, and Infantry Combat Ability. It also understands combat width and flanking, but it doesn’t yet understand army composition between infantry/cavalry/artillery. That is definitely something to continue working on.
With this improved confidence in its understanding of army strength, the AI’s safety margin for starting attacks has been reduced somewhat. It has also been made more aware of nearby armies on both sides. You will find the AI starting more winning battles, and hopefully fewer losing battles. Although the reduced safety margin combined with bad understanding of army composition can make the AI fail in this regard.
Changes to Land Combat The thought that went into the army quality AI made us realize (again, with @tempscire’s guidance) we should change some things about how combat works. As mentioned in last week’s DD; Unit Type Fire and Shock pips now affect morale damage as well strength damage. This makes the choice between Unit Types less imbalanced. Contrary to what was said last week, and in part because of feedback on that post, this will also apply to morale defense from backrow. The fact that this makes artillery more powerful and battles longer is counteracted by some more important changes we decided to do:
Infantry and Cavalry can no longer deploy/reinforce to the backrow.
Backrow regiments will now retreat when reaching 0% morale (same as frontrow regiments).
Constant 0.03 morale damage per day is now only applied to reserves, and not to regiments on the battlefield.
I’m sure many of you (just as myself not too long ago) do not understand how this affects the combat meta in practice. Without making this DD much longer than it already is, some important effects are:
It’s no longer critically important to have a full combat width of artillery in the battle on day 1.
An army of 2x combat width infantry is now superior to an army of 1x combat width infantry. Previously they were roughly equal.
You’ll need more artillery than just the combat width to last a long battle.
That’s it for this week, hope you’re as excited for 1.33 as I am! Next week @pavia will make a Dev Diary on the subject of “Script Debt”.
Thanks again to @Tempscire, but also to @xorme whose AI mod inspired some of the improvements. And thanks to everyone who provides great feedback on this forum and elsewhere!
Oh, and here is a full list of AI-related changes from the in-progress changelog:
*** AI Changelog in 1.33 ***
- Fixed Celestial Emperor advisor budgeting issue.
- Rewrote AI savings logic.
- Colonial nations spend more money on colonists.
- Increased AI minimum colonization budget.
- Reworked AI fort mothballing forts.
- Fixed issue that AIs in debt didn't convert provinces.
- Made AI consider flanking.
- AI better understands importance of generals' pips.
- AI now considers units' drill before starting a battle.
- Fixed bug where AI thought 'coordinated attack' and instead sent individual armies to die.
- Fixed multiple issues with scripted ai_army, one of which made it not work at all. It can now also be debugged with the 'mapmode armyeval' command.
- The AI now makes smarter decisions regarding Patriarchal Authority in events.
- AI better at consolidating regiments before battle.
- AI can now declare wars when overextension is up to 50% (previously 25%), but only if already coring everything.
- AI considers nearby units more when considering a battle.
- AI will now seize land from estates more often, but raise army/fort maintenance.
- Added AI priority to a few conquest missions of France and the Ottomans in order to ensure them prioritizing their missions.
- Better at taking home troops overseas (instead of disbanding).
- Build a bit more universities.
- Made AI Care about beijing, nanjing, canton for mandate.
- Made AI Care about corruption for mandate.
- Celestial Emperor more aggressive towards countries that refuse to pay tribute.
- Colonial Nations without debt are now likely to spend all subsidies they get on colonists.
- Colonial subjects will care more about wars against countries in their colonial region.
- Coordinated offensives will now focus on committed sieges.
- Fixed AI army ignoring terrain for some threat evaluation.
- Fixed bug that AI sometimes ignored armies with insufficient troops for siege.
- Fixed bug that caused exiled armies to behave erratically.
- Fixed bug that made AI less afraid of non-rebel armies, when it should be rebel armies.
- Fixed bug that made AI not declare easy wars as often.
- Fixed bug that made colonial nations not colonize islands in their own colonial region.
- Fixed issue where armies would refuse to do things nearby, because it was assigned to a region far away.
- Fixed issue with colonists not being recalled when they should be.
- Fixed issues sometimes preventing AI upgrading forts to higher level.
- Fixed issues with colonial budgeting (causing bankruptcy spirals).
- Fixed that autonomous sieging could go back and forth between provinces that were flipped back by a fort.
- Improved AI understanding of native uprising risks (less africans getting stackwiped taking a shortcut).
- Improved AI handling of estate privileges.
- Improved army quality calculations.
- Improved handling of corruption.
- Improved handling of inflation.
- Improved logic for where to build forts.
- Improved national focus (mana) handling.
- Improved the AI decision making for Orthodox events.
- Increased budget priority for saving money.
- Made AI less eager to demand return core treaty unless it likes the benefactor.
- Made AI less eager to go over naval forcelimit.
- Made AI less likely to mothball forts when risky.
- Lowered AI priority on building great projects over other buildings.
- Lowered AI safety margin when attacking to compensate for other fixes.
- Made AI aware of risk of rebels spawning in a province.
- Made AI chase your small armies in more cases.
- Made all chinese countries want to conquer the 3 Mandate cities, if they have 1 already.
- Made AI armies which are afraid of enemies, prefer safe terrain even more.
- Made AI more likely to enforce rebel demands (peace treaty) in the rare case that it can do so.
- Made AI more likely to promote cultures (with large development).
- Reduced maximum budget for subsidies to 10% of income.
- Several fixes and improvements regarding advisors.
- Somewhat more competent at naval invasions for large empires.
- Subjects with loans will keep a standing army again (although it will be small).
- The Ethopian AI will no longer move its capital while being at war.
- Tweaked AI siege priorities.
- Very small countries with scary neighbors will now keep a larger army when at peace.
- Made AI less likely to split armies in threatening places.
- Made AI more happy to hunt nearby armies.
- Army AI only takes its own armies on fleets.
- Fixed small AIs militarizing also when Rights of Man DLC disabled.
- Improved Strong Duchies AI.
- AI can handle reassigning merchants.
- AI no longer sells provinces to charter cheaply, and added new malus for presence of great projects in the province too.
- AI no longer uses pillage capital state when it has nothing to gain from it.
Greetings, and Happy New Year to everyone! Today we’re coming back to EUIV DD’s, after taking a couple of months’ break from them (unfortunately not due to long Spanish holidays, as some on the forums have suggested :p). What we’ve been doing in that time was already mentioned by Johan in the last DD: working on 1.32.1 and 1.32.2 patches, and then moving on to the next one, 1.33, that will be live later this quarter.
As Origins and 1.32.2 release have been mostly well praised (and we're very happy about that!), we thought that we wanted to move on 3 main points for the upcoming 1.33 patch:
1) Fixing most of the remaining bugs from 1.32/Origins. 2) Balancing some mechanics that had been on our list for a while. 3) Continue working to improve AI performance, as some issues appeared in 1.32.
Today I’ll be focusing on the game balance changes that we’ve been working on, as we still have some room for making changes before releasing the patch (although not new content, as we may be adding more in the next immersion pack we will be working on after this patch), and we want to receive some feedback on them from you, the community.
With Origins release, we’ve been able to revamp the setup and balance of Africa, and we’re pretty happy with it, in general terms. So, we thought of moving back to the Far East, as there were some balance issues that were not fully resolved by Leviathan although focusing in part on the SEA region. Regarding that, we were aware of the big discussion on Ming balance in the forums, thus it would be a good idea to tackle it for this patch.
Ming and the Emperor of China is a really hard tag and mechanics to balance out. It starts as the strongest country in the world, and MingBlob was not a desired outcome in past patches, as it hindered Eastern Asia gameplay (even affecting India super-region, as others have said). So, because of that Mingplosion being a regular outcome was useful for gameplay purposes, although Qing and other successors are not usually so successful when it comes to reuniting the EoC, being honest. For players, it's true that it's not the most challenging/rewarding tag to play with it, because it may be not too compelling to handle the disaster if you advance on Mandate of Heaven reforms, while at the same time it won't be a very challenging playtime, if you reach some snowball point early on (which is pretty doable by experienced players).
So, we’ve come with the following changes to Ming/EoC to try to balance it a bit better:
- The Celestial Empire now has a sixth reform available which allows vassalizing your own tributaries at the cost of Mandate. - Confucianism has been buffed: - All the modifiers from harmonized religions have been standardized in their power compared to other religions. - Reduced the base Yearly Harmony from 1 to 0.25. - Increased the Harmony cost of harmonizing a religion from 3 per year to 3.25. - Religious Unity now gives +1 Yearly Harmony at 100% Religious Unity (can not go above that). - Positive Harmony now gives: +3 Tolerance of the True Faith, -10% Development Cost, +1 Meritocracy, +0.5 Legitimacy, +1 Devotion, -0.5 Yearly Corruption, +50% Harmonization Speed. - Negative Harmony now gives: +1 Yearly Corruption, +20% Stability Cost, -1 Legitimacy, -2 Meritocracy, -2 Devotion. - Negative Stability now decreases Yearly Harmony by 0.25 per missing stability. - Eastern Denominations religions harmonized now unlock monuments requiring it. - The new Holder of the Mandate gains the following bonuses atop of their +0.05 Mandate: +12 Force Limit, -10% Land Maintenance, +15% Manpower Recovery Speed. - The events of the Ming Crisis disaster now allow you to swap your country with one of the Chinese warlords you release in the event. - Force Tributary CB (along with other CB’s with a specific purpose, as Restoration of Union and Subjugation) don’t allow taking of provinces any more.
The Idea of the Harmonization Speed increase at high Harmony is to encourage alternating between harmonizing a new religion and accumulating Harmony. It should be possible for you to be just as fast with harmonizing religions as somebody who is chain harmonizing all the time.
Apart from that, we’re doing the following changes to other countries on the Far East neighborhood:
- Manchuria Overhaul with the addition of Nivkh culture, Korchin having a vassal, redistribution of provinces and addition of the Amur Estuary (mostly following this thread in the Suggestions subforum, as we think it was really well thought: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/manchuria-again.1505121/). - Moved the Vietnamese culture out of the Chinese culture group - Added "Sinicize our Culture" for the Vietnamese and Korean cultures, allowing you to move with your culture into the Chinese culture group. The decision requires you to have a Chinese cultural majority in your country or being the Emperor of China - Korea's starting heir has been buffed by +1/+1/+1. (The reason being to buff Korea a little bit, while Hyang is a little bit more average of a monarch than the game might suggest. Sickness shortened his life quite a lot, which played a huge factor for us to give him the benefit of doubt and increase his stats a little bit). - Hanseong gained +15 Development as it was quite the big city in 1444 and comparable to the many big Chinese cities. - Shinto countries now can use Buddhist monuments.
Finally, we’ve been also doing some changes regarding Portugal, Indian estates, a combat pips rework, and other stuff: - The Castilian/Spanish mission "Recover Portugal" has been moved. Now it requires the completion of the missions "Subjugate Navarra" and "Reclaim Andalucia". The Restoration of Union CB has been moved accordingly too and is only available to Spain if both missions are completed. This change will make Portugal not so easily PU’d by Castile, as we were seeing this a lot in our nightly AI tests in the first 20 years of the game - Portuguese ideas have been buffed, as we felt that they were a bit lackluster compared to other Tier 1 countries, and that Portugal was having a rough time in early game against Castile and other powers: - Traditions: +10% Infantry Combat Ability instead of current +15% Trade Efficiency (to give Portugal a bit of punch in early game). - Legacy of the Navigator: +10 Naval Morale instead of current -33% Morale hit when losing a ship (on par with Danish NI's). - Encourage the Bandeirantes: +15% Trade Efficiency instead of +1 Merchant (basically reshuffling the older tradition into here). - Royal Academy of Fortification, Artillery and Drawing: +1 Artillery instead of +10% Artillery Combat Capacity (so it gives some land punch in early-mid game while diminishing in late game, and extra naval punch, which is WAD). - The Indian Estates now have access to their versions of powerful estate privileges such as "Strong Duchies", "Religious Diplomats", "Religious Culture" and "Nobility Integration Policy". - Added a new decision for Muslim Indian countries, which allow you to replace the Brahmins with the Dhimmi if you own any province outside the Muslim or Dharmic religion groups. - Added events for Alcheringa nations, which allow them to unlock their cults without the need to complete their missions. The events, however, have the same requirements to trigger as their mission counterparts. - Forming Rome will now convert all provinces of your culture group to Roman. - Ottoman missions are now available to Rûm. - Regiments’ fire and shock pips now also count toward morale damage in their respective phases. Many of you will know that morale pips have been superior to fire and shock pips. This change will make the pips more equal in value, although morale pips may still be the better pick most of the time. To preserve the overall flow of battles, we’re thinking not to apply this to artillery protection from backrow, as it is asymmetrical.
So, after most of these changes being implemented, and some still WIP, this is what we’re seeing in our nightlies AI tests:
In some games Portugal is performing really well, while in others Spain is still a top dog in the Iberian Peninsula and America. Regarding China, you can see that Ming sometimes manage to stay stable, while Mingplossion still happens regularly, and even some of the successor states are able to blob a bit after it, recovering MoH.
This is all for today. We’re open to feedback and suggestions given by you to further improve the balance for 1.33, if possible; just remember to have civil discussions about them, as there were some hot-heated ones a couple months ago (basically regarding Ming balance), and we don't want that to be repeated.
Next week my fellow colleague @Gnivomwill talk about the changes made to AI in the upcoming 1.33 patch (and yes, he will be tackling the AI deleting forts issue, among others). Hope you enjoy the DD!