Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! For today we take a look at a fan favorite™ of the Scandinavian region: Scandinavia itself.

Unlike our other Scandinavian kingdoms, the unified country of Scandinavia was never a real country. Yet it is undeniable that Denmark and Sweden tried to unite Scandinavia under their own banner during the history of this region. The Kalmar Union was the closest to a unification of these countries.

As Scandinavia is a formable with little historical ties we decided to make its mission tree into an extension of pre-existing mission trees of Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The newly gained missions are either an expansion on the current playstyle, or are mirroring key missions from the other Scandinavian Kingdoms. So let us go through the different tags and how forming Scandinavia impacts them.

As Sweden already has a very extensive mission tree the formation of Scandinavia expands the mission tree by 13 new missions:



Sweden receives three new branches of their mission tree and two additional missions expanding the Caroleans and Hakkapeliitta even further.

Starting from the left, the missions “Invest in the Workforce”, “Scandes Infrastructure” and “Intensify Metal Production” are newly acquired missions which are available to both Denmark and Sweden when forming Scandinavia. They give you access to the Mountain Expansion privilege as well as the event chains to discover new sources of copper, iron and even silver in Scandinavia. So in other words: they are the development missions of Norway.

The missions started with “Handle the Empire” are Swedish specific as they are a continuation of Gustavus Adolphus’ ambitions in Germany. Either through conquest or diplomacy, the goal of these missions is to dominate the Holy Roman Empire. The great payoff of uniting Germany is the following reward:



Note: keep in mind that at this point you already are the strongest nation anyway, so the payoff is one final “get richer” reward.

The final branch on the right covers the construction of a flagship which should be the pride of Swedish Scandinavia. Of course this whole branch is a reference to the Vasa.



However, if you had the event “The Sinking of Vasa” before then this event changes slightly:



The missions “Refine the Caroleans” and “Incorporate the Cavalry” revolve around the Carolean and the Hakkapeliitta. With the former mission you need to specialize even further into your military by reaching 20% Discipline OR gain 14 Military Power per month, have 25 Swedish or Finnish provinces with a barracks and at least 75% Army Professionalism. As a reward you get the following effect:


Note: This image of the Carolean buff has been done before we got to rebalance it. Right now, the reward is not set in stone.

Meanwhile, the cavalry requires you to have the Hakkapeliitta in action for 5 years as well as either having 20% Cavalry Combat Ability OR 50 cavalry in total, and having at least 10 Finnish provinces with 10 development and a barracks.





You might notice that their names are in green. The reason for that is to showcase that these mercenaries cost no Army Professionalism to hire. They also possess a special tooltip when you hover over them to showcase their special feat:



These were the Scandinavian missions for Sweden. Two to go!
Next we move on to the Danish version of the Scandinavian missions:



As Denmark your missions for the Indian subcontinent get expanded even further. “Rule over West India” and “Dominate North India” give you claims on the vast Indian regions while the “Crown of India” finishes this path of the mission tree with a permanent modifier which increases Trade Steering by 20% and Trade Company Governing Cost by 25%.

Note: We did and still do consider adding the Indian estates as a reward too for the “Crown of India” mission. Due to problems with the UI (the estate window would require a rework to be able to show more than 5 estates + crownland at the same time) as well as the issues of immersion (all the Dharma estate events will assume you are an Indian nation, not a Scandinavian foreign power which happens to own India) we are hesitant to add this reward though.

Additionally to the development missions of Norway, you also get the ones of Sweden, which are about the Sami and the Forest Expansion. These two missions are shared with Norway. You also gain the Swedish missions about dominating the Baltic Sea and conquering the entire coastline of said sea.

Finally, the mission “The Military Question” is the finisher for the mercenaries of Denmark. By having a completed Military idea group, 30% Army Professionalism, 40% Army Tradition and a level 3 Military Advisor you can fulfill this mission and trigger the following event:





That was the Danish Scandinavian missions. Last but not least, let’s see what Norway gets from forming Scandinavia.

Norway gets the biggest addition to its mission tree with 17 new missions from forming Scandinavia.



As Norwegian Scandiavia your New World ambition gets expanded way beyond North America. Do note that the “Dominate North America” and “Control South America” are not only about colonizing these continents, but also about keeping your rivals and enemies away from there. “Settle in Rio Grande” will give a permanent claim on every province owned by your rival/enemy or by their subjects in North America while “Expand the Frontier” does the same for South American provinces.

The final mission rewards of dominating the entirety of the New World are two permanent modifiers:



You will also gain some old world related missions such as new goals in Africa and the Baltic Sea.

The more exciting missions are, however, in the middle. With “Expand the Leidang” you unlock two new estate privileges for the Nobility which mirror the customizability of the Swedish Caroleans - but not it affects your marines.



Finally the mission “Kingdom of the Sea” gives a permanent 20% Good Produced and the bonus of getting 0.5% Army Professionalism whenever you hire an admiral.

Those were the Scandinavian mission trees for the three kingdoms. Of course you know that Scandinavia is not a formable exclusive to Sweden, Denmark and Norway, so the question arises: what happens if somebody else forms Scandinavia? Don’t worry, we got this case covered!



The Scandinavian mission tree was mostly inspired by the Germany mission tree as both formables are late game “what if” nations in EU4. Because of that the mission tree is split into 4 branches:

• A conquest branch, which is about the conquest of North Germany, the British Isles, the Baltics and Russia. The big reward is a permanent +100 Power Projection.
  
• A colonial branch which revolves around the New and the Old World colonialism. The highlight of these missions is a permanent Trade Company Investment cost reduction of 20% and Build Cost reduction of 10%.
  
• A branch about absolutism and revolution - Scandinavia is a tag you form with admin tech 20 after all unless you are either Sweden, Denmark or Norway. +20% Max Absolutism, +1 Diplomat and -3 Global Unrest are the rewards for sticking to the late game.
  
• A branch about the internal development of your country. Unlike the other branches, this one has the more interesting rewards and requirements. Through “Let the Ducat Roll” you unlock the Mountain and Forest Expansion privileges. “Invest in Finland” unlocks the Hakkapeliitta mercenaries for your country, “Develop the Scandes” fires the Norwegian event chain for the copper and iron in Scandinavia. And “Empire of the North” gives permanently +5% Development Efficiency.

That was it for the Scandinavian content for the DLC. However, I am not done yet with them as there are other changes related to this tag. First thing (and I know this one might not be very popular): Scandinavia is an Endgame Tag, which means you cannot form any other country other than the Roman Empire and the unified HRE.

To compensate this, however, Scandinavia receives its own unique set of ideas which reflects the different aspects of the Northern kingdoms:


Next I want to close the Carolean topic. Our newest unit had a little bit of an identity crisis as their first iteration was one of a special elite unit and the second iteration was the result of a too harsh nerf hammer.

Now we have the third and final iteration of them:



Note: These three manpower modifiers do NOT stack with each other. So in Sweden’s case it would work like this: Swedish provinces give +33% more Manpower, Finnish provinces (which are accepted by Sweden) give +20% more Manpower, Danish provinces (which are not accepted but are in the same culture group) give +10% more Manpower.



Additionally, we reduced the number of development required to recruit a Carolean unit. Now you can recruit one regiment of Caroleans for every 10 development of Swedish or Finnish provinces.

The goal is to make the Caroleans more into the standard army of Sweden than a special elite force, but they should still have a significant punch. Maybe this version might be a bit too strong, but that is the one we will stick to until the release of the DLC.

Last week’s development diary showcased the monarchy government reforms and today I want to give an update in that regard.

Many of the new reforms and changes to old reforms adjusted absolutism for monarchies which was not a very popular approach whatsoever. Because of that we have decided to drop this idea entirely. We also did some rebalancing of the tiers. Here is the new update of the monarchy reforms:

Tier 2:



Tier 3:



Note: The requirements of the Centralized Bureaucracy reforms scales with the ages. With every age the range of the requirements increases by 10 (for example: Centralized Imperial Bureaucracy would require 35 provinces in the Age of Absolutism to be visible while during the Age of Discovery it would be only 15 provinces).

Tier 5:



Note: Only the “Dynastic Administration” is new here. The other three reforms are untouched from the current version.

Tier 6:



Note: Parliamentarism and States General are unchanged.

Tier 8:



Tier 9:


Note: L’Etat c’est moi is also part of this tier, but unchanged.

Tier 10:


Note: Not in picture, “Become a Republic” and “Install Theocratic Government” are also part of this tier, but unchanged.

We also overhauled the republican reforms too. See for yourself!



Tier 2:



Tier 3:



Note: Merchant republic related reforms will not be touched and are not shown here.

Tier 5:



Tier 6:



Tier 8:



Tier 9:



Tier 10:



Tier 11 and 12 are currently WIP.

Here is also an update for the shared Tier 4 and 7.

Tier 4:


Note: All the different reforms for the religions will be revealed in a later Development Diary.

Tier 7:



This was it for this week! Next week we will take a look into a region on the other side of the Baltic Sea. I won’t say which region, but expect for next week to learn to hate your nobles when you play the star of next week’s Development Diary.

Until then I wish you all a nice week!

EDIT: I just noticed that the numbers for the army tradition decay modifiers are off. Of course we mean -0.3% and -0.1% Army Tradition Decay, not -3.0% and -1.0%. This has been fixed internally already.

Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! Today we dive into the last starting Kingdom in Scandinavia, which has not been covered yet: Norway.

As for Denmark and Sweden, the History of Norway in the Modern Age directly depended on the fate of the Kalmar Union. After the accession of the House of Oldenburg to the Danish throne in 1448, the Danish kings increasingly centralized government, even if a Norwegian Council of State formally governed the country. In fact, Norwegian landed nobles and merchants prospered under this system, as they were effectively the middlemen between the Crown and the commoners. Although some rebellions arose, such as that of Knut Alvsson, the conflicts with the Danish crown were of much less intensity compared to Sweden. This changed with the Reformation, as Frederick I and Christian III's adherence to Protestantism sparked a revolt led by the Norwegian Church. However, it was defeated in the decade of the 1530s, so Denmark and Norway remained Tvillingerigerne (Twin Realms) until 1814.

Although Norway’s history is intertwined with that of Denmark throughout the EU4 time period, we have decided to reflect in the new mission tree for Norway the potential ambitions and challenges it would have faced had it broken free with the end of the Kalmar Union.



Keep in mind: Norway’s mission tree was created before the mission trees of the Teutonic and Livonian Order. As such, the mission tree for Norway is a lot less “what if” even though they were historically no winner either. With that being said, let’s get a look at the details of the tree.

The missions of Norway are split into three themes: gain independence from Denmark and place your own Monarch on the Danish throne, Colonization and internal missions.

Starting with the independence missions, the mission “Norwegian Allies” can be completed by having two rivals or enemies of Denmark have 100 opinion of Norway. As a reward you can request their support through the following event:




Note: Although you are asking Denmark’s rivals/enemies for support in the first three options, you still get a flat reward so the war against Denmark/Sweden will be easier to handle even if the rivals refuse to support you.

Choosing one of the the first three option will of course trigger an event for Denmark’s rivals:





“Liberty for Norway!” will restore the stability loss and get you 30 Legitimacy while “Win Our Independence!” grants you a Restoration of Union cb against Denmark, allowing you to reverse the historical roles of Denmark and Sweden.

With the mission “Norway-Denmark” you no longer require an admin tech of 20 to form Scandinavia and you get the following event when you have Denmark as your personal union:


Note: It also makes you and Denmark historical friends too if you lose this status during the Restoration of Personal Union war.

While the main missions are all about reversing the flow of history and subjugating Denmark, there is also a reference to the Scottish Sinclar clan which swore loyalty to the Norwegian crown with the mission “The Claims of Orkney”. Completing it by conquering Scotland will fire this event:



These were the conquest missions for Norway. The rest of the tree is focusing on flavor and colonization, though one of these missions is of particular importance forNorway: “Expel Danish Nobility”.

As you can see, Norway was especially badly affected by the Black Death and lost the majority of its Norwegian nobility and royalty to the plague. As such, it was easier for the Danish nobility to replace them after the Kalmar Union. This is represented by the two starting privileges of Norway which are designed to be mildly annoying to have:


Note: while these privileges are active the Norwegian AI is more inclined to accept the Danish King as their monarch during the Kalmar Succession events.

While not really too harmful, these privileges prevent you from completing the mission “Norway-Denmark” and “An Absolute Kingdom”, the latter one being a mission which will give +20 Max Absolutism and -20% Autonomy Change Cooldown permanently.

Moving on to the colonial missions, although the Norwegian ideas “The Call of our Forefathers” and “Pioneer Spirits” are not exactly accurate at capturing the spirit of Norway during the 15th century and onwards, but they at least enabled a unique play style for Norway where they are “Budget Britain”. As Sweden is busy with the affairs of Europe mostly and Denmark is focusing on trade in the Old World, it was only fitting for Norway to be more about the colonization of the New World.

The mission “Colonial Ambitions” will give you a head start on exploration as it will fire the following event for you:



Speaking of Greenland, the mission “The Colony of Greenland” will require you to send troops to Greenland in order to see what happened to the former viking colony. Historically, the last written record of the Nordic Greenlanders documents a marriage in 1408. After that there was no contact with the people living there anymore.

By placing 3 regiments of infantry in either of Greenland provinces (under the assumption that they are uncolonized that is) you can complete the mission and get the following event:




The second option is the safe option where you always get the Greenland colony while the first is a gamble. 90% of the time you will get the following event when you try to look for the lost settlement:



However, if you are lucky you get this event instead:



The rest of the colonial missions focus naturally on the colonization of North America as well as expanding a little bit into South America too. They are in general quite self-explanatory, though one mission is a little bit special. “Navigation Mastery” is actually not about colonization but about circumnavigating the world!



Now let’s take a closer look at the internal missions. There are three small branches of them: trade, development of Norway, and religion.

The trade missions on the most left side of the mission tree are about completing Burgher Agendas, construct markets and, of course, dominating the trade of the North Sea and Lübeck. Highlights here are the permanent +20% Loyalty Bonus for Burghers with the mission “Monopolize the North Sea” and the new Burgher Estate privilege “Mountain Expansion” from the mission “Please the Burghers”.



The religious missions are also branching missions for Norway just like it is the case for Sweden and Denmark. However, Norway is focusing more on expanding the Heddal Stave Church in Bratsberg and keeping a stable country.

The final branch I want to talk about is the one regarding developing Norway - which also contains two missions regarding the military identity of Norway. While Denmark uses mercenaries for their wars and Sweden has its Caroleans, it was only fair that we would also give some love to Norway too.

The mission “Restore the Leidang” is about re-establishing the medieval Leidang conscription. Although ahistorical, it is an interesting way to make the military of Norway distinguishable from Sweden and Denmark as this mission will unlock the following Nobility privilege:



“Expand the Royal Navy” will further improve your naval and marine gameplay as it gives permanently -10% Shock Damage Received for your Marines, completely nullifying their drawback, and unlocking an upgraded version of your Naval Doctrine too.


Note: Numbers and modifiers are still work in progress.

The other missions of the branch are more about actually developing Norway. “Restore the Infrastructure” will request you to develop Trondelag, Ostlandet and Vestlandet so that every owned province in these areas has 10 development. As a reward you get the following event:


Note: This event is one of the flavor events Norway already has. However, now you can trigger it on your own and don’t have to wait for it.

Over the duration of this modifier you get the chance to get the following events if you own the necessary provinces:


Note: we have decided to not touch the Vanilla Silver event. We might consider making this province into a gold province or not - depending on your feedback.

Finally, the mission “Norwegian Great Power” requires you to be one of the great powers with at least 600 development and gives the following rewards:



And that was it for the content for Norway. Before we continue with the additions to the free update, let’s talk about the Caroleans. The last Development Diary has showcased the Caroleans and we have received a lot of constructive feedback from you.

We are still not finished with the balancing of the Caroleans, but I want to share our progress with you so far so we can get an idea if we are moving into a direction the community likes to see or not.

First thing, the Allotment System government reform has been rebalanced so that it reduces your force limit.



The units themselves have received a nerf. They now deal +10% Shock Damage and have -15% Morale Damage Received instead.


Note: Background of the unit is still work in progress. We need to find the right tone of blue so it is distinguishable from Rajputs, Marines and Cawa units.

And finally the privilege “Carolean March” increases the discipline of Caroleans by 5% instead of 10%.

Now let us take a look at the changes for the government reforms, which are part of the free update.



We have been working on revamping the government reforms available to the player and for today I want to showcase what we have so far for monarchies. Keep in mind: numbers and mechanics are still work in progress and what you see here is not final.

With that being said, I will go through every single tier and show the finished reforms of each tier:

Tier 2:


Tier 3:


Note regarding Tier 4: this government tier gets shared with the Republics and Theocracies, which means most of the reforms here are available to the other governments too. The reforms of Tier 4 focus on the religious and clerical matters of your state, and as such Tier 4 has 3 Clergy reforms and 14 government reforms depending on your own religion. Here are some examples of the religious government reforms:


Note: From left to right, the reforms are available for Catholics (minus the Pope), Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.

These are the remaining Tier 4 reforms:


Tier 5 (only one new reform, the rest are Vanilla)


Tier 6 is at this point of time unchanged, but we will address these reforms and make them more interesting to select.

Tier 7 is another common tier shared with Republics and Theocracies and handles the Burghers and all the economical matters of your country.



Tier 8, which is a completely new tier for Monarchies, and the reforms for Tier 9 are still work in progress, so they will have to wait for next week’s Development Diary.

That was it for this week! For next week we will finally get to know more about this one special tag:



Until then I wish you all a nice week!

Hallå allihopa! Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! Today is the day where we finally get to cover the content for Sweden, so let’s get started!

Yesterday, June 6th, it was celebrated the National Day of Sweden, as the remembrance of Gustav Vasa being elected king in 1523. This was a pivotal moment in Swedish history, as it finished the union with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway after more than one century of common government. It happened after some decades of a troublesome political relation between the Sweden nobility and the Danish kings that ended in the tragic Stockholm Bloodbath, and the already mentioned coronation of King Gustav, starting the famous and powerful Vasa dynasty, which would rule until mid 17th century.

The mission tree for Sweden recaptures the rise of Sweden to the dominant power of the Baltics prior to the Great Northern War. But it also covers other ambitions and developments of Sweden.



The Swedish mission tree is split into two blocks just like Denmark’s: the first half of the mission tree is all about the historical conquest and their further ambitions in Europe. The other half, on the other hand, is a lot more about flavor missions which focus on internal development, colonization and of course the religious direction of your country.

Starting with the “conquest block”, Sweden’s initial missions - “Engelbrekt Rebellion”, “Swedish Allies”, “Military Advice” and “Support from the Estates” - revolve around preparing yourself for your war for independence against Denmark. It should be noted that certain events such as “The Engelbrekt Rebellion” have been incorporated into these first missions.

“Swedish Allies” can be completed by improving the relations of Denmark’s enemies / rivals and fires the following event:


Note: Support Independence is becoming part of this DLC.

Note: Numbers are not final.

Not in the picture is the third option, which just decreases your liberty desire by 50%. This option is mostly used by the AI in case Denmark managed to handle the Swedish nobility already and the AI just happens to complete this mission by accident.

If you have chosen the second option and you win your independence war against Denmark without any allies whatsoever then the following event will fire for you:



However, if you try to cheese it by selecting the second option and then getting support for independence from another country then you get this event during the war with Denmark:



With the mission “Military Advise” you get another event which will support you in your quest for independence:




Note: Johan (Kristernsson) Vasa is the grandfather of Gustav I Vasa. If you complete this mission at a later date you get Erik Vasa - the father of Gustav - or even Gustav Vasa himself. There is virtually no difference between them other than their names however.

When you gain your independence while the modifier is active then another event will fire for you:



Of course you have the option to keep your current king. The AI will always choose the king with the better stats.

Finally, with “Support from the Estates” you can choose what kind of support you want and from who:



The Nobility will grant you a level 2 discipline advisor for only 25% of his price, the Clergy gives a large amount of Papal Influence and the Burghers will lend you galleys for your fight against Denmark. However, taking any of their support will put you into debt with the estate in question and you will have to enact a decision to get out of it. This decision is a requirement for one of the late missions. However, you can completely ignore it altogether by either choosing the fourth option (which gives 20 Prestige) or waiting until the “Stockholm Bloodbath” event fires (which has been presented in the Denmark Development Diary). In the case you complete this mission after the Bloodbath event the estates will grant you their support for free due to the atrocity done to your Nobles by your overlord.

After all these missions and events you are more than ready to face your overlord and declare your Independence War! The missions after “Declare Independence!” are rather self explanatory as they now focus on conquering the coastline of the Baltic Sea. However, some missions are a little bit more special.

“Stabilize the Kingdom” is one of them. It requires you to, well, stabilize your kingdom by having high legitimacy, stability and have no debts to any of your estates. In return the mission lets you choose how to complete other missions:





Three options; three ways to complete the “The Kingdom of Poland” mission later on. The third option is especially interesting for those who want to have a co-op campaign with Sweden and Poland or who do not want to blob into Polish territory. This gives some flexibility to your mission tree without going too much into the “what if” territory which is reserved for the Orders.

The other mission of interest is “Swedish Skåneland” - or rather its reward. Completing this mission will give you a special casus belli against Denmark if they still have Norway as subject:




Note: If Norway is independent then you gain a normal PU cb against Norway, not a special one against Denmark.

The mission “The Crown of Norway” rewards you with a historical friendship with Norway if you have them as your subject with at least 50 opinion of you.

Last but not least let’s take a look at the “finisher” missions of the conquest block. “Dominium maris baltici” has two ways to be completed: you either own the entire coastline, or you have allies who own it. If you complete it by having you or your subject own the coastline then you gain permanently -5 Years of Separatism and +2 Monthly Splendor.

The mission “Stormakstiden” rewards you with the following event:


Note: The country of Scandinavia will be worth forming with the free update, but that is topic for a later Development Diary.

Finally, the mission “Lord of Eastern Europe” fires the following event:



Note: This event and the mission “Varangians’ Legacy”, which requires you to conquer and develop Novgorod, are the only Viking references for Sweden. Asking for more is futile.[/i]

Now with the conquest missions covered let’s move on to the flavor missions for Sweden - and they are plentiful. The flavor missions are divided into 5 branches: Internal missions regarding the Sami and the Swedish peasants, Swedish colonialism, Trade and Industrialization, Military Reforms and Religious matters.

The Internal missions on the most left side of the mission tree handle the Swedish peasantry, which play a large role in Sweden’s history, and the Sami population which is inevitably part of your country. By establishing 10 manufactories in Grain, Fish and Livestock provinces, having 2 stability and by either having overcome the “The Dacke War” disaster or by having at least 10 Grain, Fish or Livestock provinces with 10 development you can complete the mission “The Peasants’ Agenda”, giving the following reward:



Speaking of the disaster: the Dacke War disaster has become a little bit more dangerous and more likely to trigger.


Note: Numbers are not final.

The mission “Integrate the Sami” on the other hand is about your cultural approach to them and can be completed by having all the Sami provinces a religion and culture you accept - how you do this is up to you. This will unlock the Burghers “Forest Expansion” estate privilege:



The mission “Forest Expansion” is developing your forest provinces, so not really much to talk about. The reward reduces the Development Cost of all owned Arctic Scandinavian provinces by 40% however, which makes playing tall with just Scandinavian provinces an actual option.

The colonial missions of Sweden are self explanatory: you take the provinces which were historically part of Swedish colonial ambitions.

On the other side, however, are the missions about dominating the Baltic trade and industrializing your country - your copper and iron provinces to be more precise. Highlight of this branch is an event where you can decide what the price of copper will be for Europe:




Note: Keep in mind that the burst of money you get from the other two options scale with your own production of Copper and Iron.

The missions regarding the religious matter work very similar to the ones of Denmark. Here are the three paths with Catholicism on the left, Protestantism in the middle and Humanist in the right:



Highlights of each path are the following things:

• For Humanist, the mission “Disempower the Clergy” removes triggered rebels from the Clergy if you seize land
  
• The mission “Religious Peace” gives permanently +1 Max Tolerance of Heretics and Heathens
  
• Catholic and Protestant “Defender of the True Faith” give you a modifier which increases the Tolerance of True Faith by 1, Manpower in True Faith provinces by 15% and Imperial Authority Growth Modifier by 25%. It is active until you change your religion.

There is one mission I want to go into further detail: the mission “The Religious League” requires you to participate in the League War (or complete the fallback if the League War is impossible due to non-existent HRE). While for the Catholic side it is completed when the League War never fires, the Protestant mission requires that it happens.

Well, there are moments where the AI refuses to convert to Protestantism due to their position as Elector, even though 90% of their land is Protestant. Fortunately the mission “The Protestant Sword” covers you in that regard. By having a Protestant HRE ally who is either an elector or has 100 development you can complete this mission and unlock a decision which lets you force the formation of the Religious League. Because of that the Protestant mission “The Protestant Sword” unlocks a special decision which… “motivates” your fellow Protestant brethren to form a Religious League on their own.





At long last we shall take a look at the final branch of the flavor missions: the military branch. Two parts played a major role in the military history of Sweden: the Finnish Hakkapeliitta and the Carolean units. The mission “The Hakkapeliitta” unlocks for you the special Hakkapeliitta mercenary company which costs no Army Professionalism to hire:


Note: The merc company has 100% Cavalry to Infantry Ratio because it does NOT take the value from your own government into account. This is only an issue for merc companies which consist of over 50% cavalry, so other mercenary companies do not require this modifier.

The mission “Reform the Military” has three ways of completion: the first one can be done by patience as you just have to wait until Mil Tech 19 and have 40 Army Tradition. The second way is a little bit faster as you need to hit 75 Absolutism.
However, most players will probably go for the third way which is a lot more difficult to achieve, but can be done before the Age of Absolutism:

• Gain 15 Mil Power per month
  
• Have 800 Military Power (is affected by All Power Modifiers)
  
• Have a Level 3 Military Advisor
  
• Completed at least one Military Idea Group

Completing this mission by this way will cost you mentioned Military Power.

These are some hard conditions, but the reward makes pain worth it:



The Carolean unit is not fully implemented just yet in the game so bear with me for the lack of screenshots, but at least I can talk a little bit about how the unit works. The Carolean unit is an infantry only unit which you can only recruit in Swedish or Finnish provinces and the amount of how many you can recruit scales with the development of your Swedish and Finnish provinces. The Carolean infantry has the normal costs of an Infantry unit right now - so without any modifiers it costs 10 Ducats.
Of course a unique unit also requires unique modifiers to make them worth their effort: the Carolean unit deals 25% more Shock Damage and receives -20% Morale Damage. That’s it. The only downside this unit has is that the amount of Carolean you can recruit is heavily limited by the dev of your Swedish and Finnish development with 20 development of a Swedish or Finnish province equalling 1 Carolean Regiment.

The mission “Drill the Caroleans” also unlocks two special Noble privileges which modify how your Caroleans fight for you too.


Note: “Morale Damage” should be here in Green. It is already fixed internally, but I didn’t have the time to update my version of the game. Also these modifiers only affect Carolean units.

Keep in mind that all the numbers are still work in progress. The Carolean presented here might get the nerf hammer before they get released.

With that being said, that was the content for Sweden!

Due to the extent of this Dev Diary, the free content part will be more of a teaser for next week:



That was it for this week! Next week we will dive into the content for Norway.
Until then I wish you all a nice week!

Hej allesamen! Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! After covering the Baltics it is finally time to switch our focus to Scandinavia, so let’s get started!

As the 13th century drew to a close, powerful social mechanisms such as feudalism and manorialism had formed deep roots in the Danish Court. At the same time, the Christian church had, at that point, come to dominate religious matters all across the Scandinavian region. At home, the royal family, spearheaded by Margaret I, would finally place a singular dynastic head on each of the three lions’ thrones, during the last years of the 14th century.

As of the treaty of Kalmar in 1397 the Nordic Crowns of Norway, Sweden and Denmark are intended to be borne by one monarch. Since its inception this Kalmar Union has been led by the Danes, the strongest and richest of the Nordic powers, close to the continent with an ambition to control and dominate the Baltic Sea area.

Eventually however, the Kalmar Union fell apart when Sweden broke free from Denmark and established an empire of its own later on. The goal of the Danish mission tree is to avoid this fate. It also focuses on the ambitions Denmark had during the time period of EU4 and as such is a lot less experimental than the Teutonic and the Livonian Orders’ mission trees.



You will notice that the Danish mission tree is separated into two “blocks”. The first half is about keeping the Kalmar Union together with a few conquest missions on the side to ensure that Denmark is the sole maritime power in North Europe.
The second block on the other hand is a lot more about the Danish ambitions of colonialism, the question of religion, embracement of Absolutism and the usage of mercenaries as the army for Denmark.

We will focus on the Kalmar Union block first as it ties into the mechanics which are unique to Denmark with the upcoming DLC. When you start as Denmark while the DLC is active you will be confronted with this government reform at your start:



The Kalmar Union is a somewhat mixed bag for the player. On the one hand, the diplomatic relations and possible advisors are desirable to have, but on the other hand you are confronted with the fact that you can not manually integrate any kind of personal union (however, inheriting them is still feasible though). You also have to deal with the “Kalmar Election” which is a unique mechanic to Denmark.
As you might know neither Sweden nor Norway had a hereditary monarchy but an elective one. So whenever your king dies as Denmark while you have this government active you get the following event:





This will trigger the following event for your Scandinavian personal unions:
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It is important to note that the AI will make their choice based on your prestige, diplomatic reputation and how much Liberty Desire they have with the latter one being their biggest factor. As Denmark you really want to keep the liberty desire low of each of your personal unions or otherwise they might spiral out of your control and will easily find supporters for their independence.

While the first and third options are rather self-explanatory, the second one is a choice that the AI can take when they are not fully convinced by your ruler - mostly when your ruler is quite the unfortunate one regarding his monarch skills - but do not desire to break out of the Kalmar Union yet. In this case the junior partners can suggest somebody from their own ranks to take over the Kalmar Union as your king:



This will of course trigger an event for Denmark where they can accept or reject to proposed regent:




Of course you can always reject the proposal, though this will result in your junior partner becoming slightly upset about your decision. Alternatively, you can accept the new king, but because your junior partners have to elect their king this will result in a new re-election:



However, this event will not allow your junior partners to propose another new king (otherwise you would end up in a loop of elections of new kings while hilarious for the first three or four rounds can become quite annoying really fast). Additionally, the one who suggested your new king in the first place will ALWAYS elect him to king, so you can reduce some liberty desire this way.

While the Swedish and Norwegian nobilities are a pain to deal with, you cannot forget your own. Historically, the Danish nobles did not support the Kalmar Union and attempted to exploit the divided attention of the Danish King. This gets represented in form of an event which triggers around every four years:



There are 11 demands in total and the nobility will pick one of them. Each one of them has some penalty to your country: be it from losing monarch power to losing Ducats to even getting the risk of a hunting accident.



Now let’s go back to Denmark's mission tree. The centerpiece of the mission tree focuses on resolving the conflicts with the other junior partners. By increasing the opinions of your Norwegian and Swedish subjects you can complete the missions “The Crown of Norway” and “The Crown of Sweden” which give you the following events respectively.



The first option allows you to receive a penalty to National Tax Modifier / Goods Produced Modifier by -10% and an increase of the Nobility’s Influence by +10%, but in return your two subjects gain a modifier which decreases their liberty desire by 10% and increase their Yearly Tax Income, which makes them to durable subjects during your wars with other European countries. The second option just gives some monarch power. On the other hand there is the third option which allows you to be more risky with your personal unions, giving the following effects:



Note: keep in mind that numbers and modifiers are NOT final.

The “Integrate Holstein” mission is rather self explanatory. However, “The Nobles of Sweden” is a little bit of a different story:



This whole mission is basically about a medium-long event chain (which also incorporates some of the vanilla Danish / Swedish events into it) where you can choose how to deal with the nobility of Sweden. For the sake of simplicity I will only highlight the two possible results of the event chains:





The event for Sweden when Denmark chooses to be more hostile...

After dealing with the Swedish nobility (by either defeating them on the battlefield which is Sweden or by executing them in quick succession in Stockholm), you can start working on the “Ratify the Kalmar Union” mission which triggers the following event for you:



Note: Modifiers and mechanic values are subject to change.

Keep in mind that you get this event ONLY when you complete the “Ratify the Kalmar Union” mission while having the Kalmar Union government reform. Otherwise you get +100 Monarch Points for each category. The military bonuses mentioned here are the following ones: you gain flat +2000 Manpower and +400 Sailors per Junior Partner + an additional +5% Global Manpower Modifier and Global Sailors Modifier. Meanwhile, your junior partners will receive the military benefits of Marches, so keeping them as your military buffer states.

You also unlock one decision which might be welcome to any roleplayer here:



Historically, only Christopher III von Wittelsbach styled himself as “Arch-King” while everyone else in Europe just used the normal title. In a time where Cristopher and his heirs might have managed to keep the union together it seemed plausible enough to us that future generations of Danish rulers might choose to follow Christopher’s naming fashion. It is, however, a purely visual title and you gain no other benefit than having an unique title.

Now that we are done with the Kalmar Union section let’s take a look at the remaining missions of the first block. The most right side of the missions are quite obvious what they are about: challenge the English navy, conquer England and gain dominance in the British Isles. These missions are referencing the North Sea Empire, but the mission descriptions make clear that the conquest of England is motivated by maritime rivalry and commercial dominance in Lübeck and the English Channel, not by the lost accomplishments of the Danish vikings centuries ago.

The most left branch of the missions is more concerned about a more important enemy Denmark is facing: the Hansa. Some of you, the community, already commented how the poor merchant republic of Lübeck gets bullied in this DLC and Denmark’s mission tree continues with this trend. The mission “Humiliate Lübeck” unlocks a decision for you which will be very much needed for the next mission:



The mission “The Cities of the Hansa” will require you to control all the important centers of trade in the Lübeck trade node - all lands in the HRE. Because of that, you will most likely know to appreciate this decision as this will trigger a DEFENSIVE war against the Hansa.
The rest of the mission branch is then about conquering Estonia and Novgorod and of course expanding the Sound Toll. Highlight here is a permanent +25% Trade Efficiency modifier.

Now that we are done with the European affairs part of the mission tree it is time to go into detail for the second block of missions. The missions linked to “Colonial Ambitions” are the biggest branch of this mission tree and cover the colonial ambitions of Denmark with a big focus on colonizing valuable trade company regions and a lesser focus on the New World (which also gets updated if you happen to play with a Random New World).

The second biggest branch of the flavor events are the branching missions on the most right. These are focusing on the religious direction of your country: stay loyal to the Catholic Church, embrace the Reformation or become a state of Tolerance. Completing the mission “The Age of Reformation” fires the following event which unlocks your religious missions:



One notable mission from the religious ones are the “Spread the Reformation” / “The Religious League” missions which you unlock by either taking Reformation or Catholicism missions respectively. What makes them special is that they are intertwined with the Religious League War. You complete them by winning the Religious League War and the mission rewards you with +2 Military Skill for your monarch and +150 opinion of every HRE member which follows your religion, which makes becoming the next Emperor of the HRE more feasible.

One minor but important branch I want to go into detail is the one regarding the mercenaries. As some of you might know, Denmark is not really known for its own strong military during this time period. Instead of Danish soldiers, the kings of Denmark relied heavily on German mercenaries to do the monarchs’ bidding. The mission “The German Mercenaries” emphasizes it. By improving the opinion of several owners of homes of Germanic mercenary companies you can complete this mission and the following event fires for you:



The mercenaries you unlock are dependent on which owners of Germanic merc company homes have a high opinion of you. In this case Denmark increased the opinions of Saxony, Hesse, Wurttemberg and Switzerland.

And that was the Danish mission tree!

As we were working on the Danish mission tree the time for us has come to also revisit the Danish ideas. While the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden have unique and/or very powerful ideas, the Danish ideas fell flat on both fronts. We wanted to change this for the upcoming update and as such we decided to give Denmark an update:

While we were updating the ideas of Denmark we also remembered another favorite of the community whose ideas were rather lackluster - even for its time back then:

Owners of Rule Britannia will also have access to more Naval Doctrines for more countries. These are the new ones added to the game we have so far:

For Danish countries:For Norwegian countries:For Dutch / Flemish countries:

It is unclear right now if we’ll add more naval doctrines or not, but we have an open ear for more naval doctrine suggestions.

And that’s it for this week! Next week’s DD will be about the most overpowered perfectly balanced country in Scandinavia.

Until then I wish you all a nice week!

Hello everyone, Gnivom here today.

I may return for a future dev diary on the many AI improvements we’re making for 1.34, but today’s topic is Land Combat.

First a recap:

For 1.33, we decided to change some things with combat; first mentioned in this January DD and soon amended by making backrow regiments take 60% less morale damage. The core idea was to remove some weird traps that uninitiated players (I would guess a majority) and the AI (without major modifications) would easily fall for. In particular, having a large army without a full back row of artillery could be disastrous.

However, those changes also caused some unintended balance effects:

• Battles last longer, sometimes a lot longer.
  
• Morale is much less important.
  
• Stackwipes (officially “overruns”) are much less common (though this is mostly caused by the AI accidentally exploiting the Zombie Regiments bug, by shift-consolidating troops before battle).
  
• Tech Groups’ impact through unit pips have been amplified. This has not been addressed so I won’t mention it again in this DD.

Additionally, some of you have pointed out that what can be seen as a “noob trap” can also be a source of tactical depth in multiplayer.

Now, let's look at what's new for 1.34 and how this addresses these issues.

In 1.33 we made the daily 0.03 “morale damage to reserves” actually only apply to reserves, where it previously applied to deployed troops as well. The intention was to relatively penalize overstacking more as well as to be consistent with the name.
This is a major cause for the longer battles in the early game, and for morale being less important, and has now been reworked in 1.34 to as follows:

• Deployed troops take a daily morale damage of 1% of max morale.
  
• Reserves take a daily morale damage of 2% of max morale.

Only the reserves are affected by the Professionalism modifier, so it remains mostly a QoL modifier, although its absolute effect is now much bigger.

Max morale is not based on the regiment itself, but on the average of all regiments on the other side. Such that, in a standoff between a Prussian and a regular soldier, where neither is shooting, the regular soldier will run first.

The fact that this is now a percentage means that its importance will be consistent throughout the ages, so that late-game battle length is now shorter.

While on the subject of morale, some of you may know that when entering a battle against someone with higher morale, your morale progress bar starts at less than 100%. This is now changed to show the percentage of your own average max morale, rather than the max of all regiments on either side. This makes it easier in my experience to guess who is winning from just looking at the bars.
As mentioned above, EU4 has always had a bug (feature?) called Zombie Regiments.
In 1.34, regiments will always retreat and be replaced once either strength or morale reaches 0, removing the 12 day invincibility.

Additionally, an obscure condition for stack wipes based on the remaining morale of defeated regiments has been removed. You probably didn’t know about it (I didn’t), but it started mattering when 0-strength full-morale regiments were immediately retreated.

All in all, stack wipes are now much more viable than in 1.33, but still less viable than in 1.32 if the losing side has more than a full front row of decent-morale troops.



Adding a screenshot here for future readers, as the wiki link may be obsolete.

Insufficient Support currently works by applying a flat -25% Combat Ability to all troops of an army that has too much cavalry, even if it’s just 1 knight above the limit. Although it’s made a bit more complicated by counting armies from different countries separately, as well as mercenaries.

In 1.34, this will instead be a scaling penalty of -1% CA per percentage point of cav/inf ratio above your limit. The ratio will be calculated based on all deployed front row troops on your side, while the limit will be calculated individually per regiment. Only cavalry gets affected by the penalty.

Two things to note:

• A country with a high support can still cause allied cavalry to lose CA.
  
• If you overstack your armies, an overall balance does not guarantee a frontrow balance at every moment of fighting.

Artillery unit pips have been rebalanced.

• Late-game artillery will have less defensive pips and more offensive ones, contributing to shorter late-game battles.
  
• Techs 7, 10 and 13; which give two options; now have a distinct difference between the two, where neither is strictly superior to the other.

Let me take this moment to briefly explain an existing feature: for each damage calculation, backrow artillery propagates half of the sum of relevant defensive pips to the unit in front of them (rounding down). For example, the Leather Cannon will propagate 2/2=1 pip to strength damage calculation in the fire phase, and 1/2=0 pips during shock phase. For morale damage, it will propagate (2+1)/2=1 pip during the fire phase and (1+1)/2=1 pip during the shock phase.

With this feature in mind:

• At tech 7, you choose between winning battles quickly (Mortar) or dealing strength damage (Houfnice).
  
• At tech 10, the Pedrero is your anti-cavalry weapon by propagating 1 shock defense to the front row. But the Culverin deals more strength damage.
  
• At tech 13, the Small Cannon propagates 1 morale defense to the front row in both phases, but the Large Cannon will deal more damage (to both strength and morale).

This change in particular is still subject to further testing, tweaking and possible removal.

Reinforcement to backrow means something very different now vs in 1.32. In 1.32 it was a way to push further infantry/cavalry into the death pit that was the back row. Only after all inf/cav reserves were spent did artillery reinforce to the back, and once there they never left.
Now (since 1.33) only cannons can be in the back row, and they can also retreat from it, which makes back row reinforcement an important (and positive) thing.

From 1.34, each combat side will be limited to 2 back row reinforcements per day, plus 1 per 2 maneuver pips of the commanding general. This does not limit initial placement of artillery at battle start.



This is intended to increase tactical depth in multiplayer, by a number of means:

• Armies caught low on artillery are more vulnerable, though not as badly as in 1.32.
  
• Cavalry becomes more useful during two distinct phases of the battle:
  
  • Just after the initial line of artillery retreat, which happens roughly simultaneously.
    
  • Later in the battle, when the combat duration modifier is so high that artillery reinforcements can’t keep up with churn.
• This breaks the symmetry of long battles, so that artillery (and by extension, infantry/cavalry as well) don’t all retreat in huge batches.
  
• Quality becomes more important over quantity in long battles, as high quality troops will lower the “artillery saturation” of the enemy.

After some initial testing and discussion, this feature will probably not make it into vanilla, but it will be available for modders to enable.

• Two defines have been created: INFANTRY_BREAKTHROUGH and CAVALRY_BREAKTHROUGH, each being a probability between 0 and 1.
  
• When defeating a regiment with artillery behind it, you have a probability (equal to the corresponding define) of pulling that artillery into the front row.

If we don’t change our minds, and if you still choose to enable this, there will be no UI or tooltip mentioning this whatsoever.

Well, that’s all for today!

Next week, Ogele will return with a Dev Diary showcasing the new content we’ve been creating for the first country in the Scandinavian region: Denmark, and its troubled lead over the Kalmar Union.

Hello there and welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! For this week we will take a dive into the mission tree for Riga and into the additions to the game from the free update. So let’s get started!

Located at a commercially advantageous position, Riga enjoyed great wealth and affluence between the 13th and 15th century, during which she served as part of the well-known Hanseatic League. Despite its size, the city survived for many centuries, eventually becoming a manufacturing and mercantile center of whichever power had influence in their surrounding territory.

As for its mission tree we try to answer one question: is it possible to make playing (and staying as) an OPM enjoyable? The Rigan mission tree is relatively small, but it will lead your OPM of Riga into an unique direction of gameplay.



The mission tree is split into three branches, focusing each on different tasks for your nation to do. Starting with the smallest of the three, the “City against the State” and “Develop Our City” missions focus on establishing authority of the Archbishop over the city of Riga as historically the city itself was very autonomous of its ruler.
What makes these missions special is that their rewards are the nature of the modifiers granted by them. Unlike usual permanent modifiers, your capital receives these triggered modifiers:



The most right branch of the mission tree is made of the military missions. Although the intended playstyle is staying as small as possible, it is apparent that a beautiful city such as Riga needs a buffer state to keep it protected from Novgorod and the jaws of Commonwealth. Because of this the mission “Raise Riga’s Defense” will give you a subjugation casus belli against the Livonian Order. You will also gain +10% Morale for a limited amount of time, but that is all you get, so good luck in your first war.

“Subjugate the Livonians” will give you your final subjugation casus belli against the Teutonic Order and unlock decisions which will handle the estate privileges of your Livonian subject.
After the mission “Punish the Teutonic Order” you get the following event:



Finally, the mission “The Knights of Riga” will be completable when you manage to keep the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order loyal to you, and it gives you the following reward:



The rest of the mission tree focuses on trade, religion and Empire. With the mission “Contact the Emperor” you can join the HRE through the following event:



With the mission “Papal Embassy” you gain another event which will make your capital into a seat for a Cardinal.
Finally, if you complete the mission “Compete with the Swedes”, “Trade Presence in Lübeck” and “Papal Embassy” the following event fires:



The Catholic Plutocracy is a Theocratic version of the Merchant Republic, but with one additional bonus: you are allowed to sell Indulgences to other Catholic countries!*

*Cannot sell Indulgences to countries which are at war with you or are subjects. You need at least 75 Papal Influence. You cannot sell an Indulgence to the Pope himself.



Note: AI acceptance of the Indulgences is dependent on their current treasury, if they are in deficit and if they even need the extra stability. Countries with +1 stability for example have -50 reasons to accept it while countries with negative stability gain +50 reasons for every missing stability.

Of course selling Indulgences is not without its consequences. Every time you sell one to a Catholic country you will increase the Reform Desire by 0.25%. Eventually, you could run out of customers this way as the Reformation will convert them to Protestantism.

If you happen to join the reformation (and repent for you sins of selling Indulgences) you will get the following event:



Note: The name of this government reform is a placeholder, and we appreciate suggestions for a better sounding name.

While the Catholic Plutocracy focuses on earning money through the selling of Indulgences, the Theocratic Plutocracy is more concerned with spreading the Reformation. As such, the trade policy “Propagate Religion” will be available to you to convert Catholic provinces to your state religion - as long as you are either Hussite, Protestant, Reformed or Anglican.
Additionally, you get access to the following peace option:



This is the first experiment of a peace option which forces the losing country to destroy a building in one of their provinces. In this case it is the tax building, and it selects the province in this order: capital, then highest developed non-oversea province, then highest developed province.

Coming back to Riga’s mission tree, the mission “Sell Indulgences!” requires you to either sell Indulgences 5 times, or raid 5 heretic churches in total. From there your mission tree branches into four smaller paths of which have the following highlights:

• The mission “Mercenary Contracts” halves the Army Professionalism cost of all recruited mercenary companies.
  
• The mission “Handle the Reformation” reduces the trade power needed for Propagating Religion from 50% to 15%. It also unlocks a new casus belli against all heretic countries, with the only goal is to force convert them to your faith - you can NOT conquer any provinces with this cb though.
  
• The mission “Break the Hansa” can be completed by improving the opinion of all members of Lübeck’s trade league. When completed, Lübeck will get an event where they are either forced to grant temporary privileges to their trade league members, which make them basically useless for Lübeck, or let them choose if they want to stick with Lübeck or want to join Riga’s Trade League.

Speaking of Hansa: we have some good news for every Merchant Republic enjoyer here!
With the free update, Merchant Republics gain full access to both their factions and estates. Although there were arguments that they should have one or another, we think it is a fair change if the merchant republic has access to both systems. Factions are very outdated and would require too much work for 1.34 to be reworked, which is why we have made this decision.

We also added a new government reform for Novgorod when they form Russia:



While we are at the topic of government reforms: Dharma overhauled the system of government reforms for EU4, and has allowed players to customize their experience as they progress through their campaign. While we really like the concept, the amount of choices always felt a little bit lackluster.
Because of that we have decided to add new government reforms beyond the Tier 1 level, and rebalance existing non-Tier 1 reforms so you have more agency while picking your government reforms. Here is a peak into the more interesting reforms we are going to add for the Republics:



The general design idea is that government reforms should not necessarily be just a source for more modifiers to stack for you (though they will never really leave us either) but as changes and additions of mechanics of your country.
For example: the mechanic “Can force Re-election” allows you to use one simple decision at the cost of 5 Republican Tradition every 20 years to trigger the “Election!” event. Despite the fact that it is just one simple decision attached to a government reform, it can have a significant impact on your Monarch Power generation.

With the addition of these new reforms we aim to have around 4 or 5 government reforms to choose from per tier above the first one.

With the help of our newest colleague we also have started to add new reforms for the monarchies. Here you can see two new reforms:



Of course we are also reworking some of the older reforms too:



That was it for today!

Until then I wish you all a nice week!

Greetings everyone! And welcome back to another Development Diary for the upcoming DLC. Last week we took a look at the Teutonic Order, and for today we shall visit the monastic neighbor to its north: the Livonian Order.

The Livonian Brotherhood of the Sword was founded in Riga in 1202 for the purpose of christianizing Livonia. Despite their early successes, the Brotherhood suffered a heavy defeat against the Lithuanians in 1237. The remaining members of the Brotherhood then got incorporated into the Teutonic Order, which then later branched into the Livonian Order we all know in EU4.

The Livonian Order survived its Teutonic brother, but in the end it too was conquered by its neighbors. As such their mission tree is similar to the ones of the Teutonic Order: a mission tree of “what if?”, though this time it is a little bit more grounded as the Livonian Order did persist as the Polish vassal state Kurland for some time after until the third partition of Poland.



Just like the Teutonic Order, so does the Livonian Order have a bunch of branching missions depending on the path you choose. However, you first have to complete the middle column first in order to unlock your missions.

Most of the missions are rather self explanatory from their titles alone (“Protect Riga” and “The Teutonic Knights” both require you to ally or to conquer Riga and the Teutonic Order respectively for example).
The more interesting one, however, is the mission “The Livonian Confederation”. In 1444, the Livonian Order was by far not as unified as it is shown in EU4. It had four bishoprics as well as the Archbishopric of Riga within it, which were not really subjects of the Livonian Order but allies.

Due to the freeze of the map and the hard block of introducing new tags to the game, we have decided to take a more abstract approach to the Livonian Confederation:



Every bishopric and the lands of Riga are portrayed as one estate privilege to the Clergy estate. And yes, we are increasing the number of maximum possible estate privileges from 4 to 6! More to it in the free patch section.

Each of these privileges has its own penalty which makes these bishoprics obnoxious to keep. Fortunately, you don’t have to wait endlessly for clergy loyalty to revoke them (though this is the easiest way to get rid of them). While you have any of the bishoprics active in your land, you gain access to these two decisions:



Each of these decisions is one way to get rid of one of these bishoprics. “Purchase Bishopric” requires you to be debt free and to have no deficit, as well as to have a starting capital of 100 Ducats (which is basically the starting fee to even get into the trade with one of these bishops), and triggers the following event:



The cost of these bishoprics is relative to the land they historically had. For example: the Bishopric of Reval was rather small and only covered the city, while the Bishopric of Dorpat covered the whole province. In general, the pattern is like this: the higher up in the event option, the more costly it gets.

If you cannot throw money at your problem to get it gone, then the decision “Dissolve Bishopric” might be the better option. At the small:™: price of 2 stability you can trigger the following event:



This decision cannot be enacted if you either already have rebels in your land or if you are at war.

On a side note: you need to own the provinces where these bishoprics are located to revoke the privileges through the decisions or manually. However, losing the land will NOT remove the privilege - this is mostly due to gameplay reasons as you shouldn’t be motivated to give all your land to Lithuania to get rid of these privileges.

After getting rid of all the small bishoprics and finishing the mission “Protect Riga” you can finally seize the lands of the Archbishopric of Riga, the mission “The Livonian Confederation” will be completed and you will get 10% Crown Land from your Clergy back.

Then, with the mission “Strengthen Our Authority” you can finally get this event:



Let us first start with the mission tree of the Livonian mission path:



You will notice that there are colonial missions, which seems a little bit weird for a Baltic nation whose only trade connection to the New World is in the Lübeck trade node. The reason for that is that the Livonian path of the mission tree gets shared with Kurland (more to it in the free patch section).

The colonial missions are quite obvious what they are about: discover the New World, colonize North America, colonize key ports of Africa and reach India. Highlights of these two mission columns are two rather powerful permanent trade bonuses such as +10% Trade Efficiency from dominating colonial trade and +10% Global Trade Power from colonizing India.
On a side note: if you have a Random New World active then the North American missions get replaced with ones which address the Random New World.



Continuing with the mission tree, the middle column handles the mentioned issue of no gain from New World trade. With the mission “Deal with the Hansa”, which requires you to defeat Lübeck, you gain the following reward:



In a way, you will be able to benefit from your colonies even if you do not conquer the Lübeck trade node.

Another part of the middle column of the mission is the mission “Secularize the Order” which fires the following event for you:


The tag of Livonia has received some big changes, more to it in the 1.34 section.

With the mission “A Prussian Alliance” you either focus on conquering and developing Prussia OR keeping a healthy alliance with Prussia. If you complete this mission through diplomacy, you and Prussia become historical friends.
I also should point out that the mission trees of the Teutonic Order and the Livonian Order were designed with a MP co-op approach in mind: missions which have overlapping regions of interest can be completed if either of the one tags hold the land.

With the mission “Reform the Government” you will start a process of creating a government reform which is suited for your needs. This will be a process of 6 events, each one of them has a mean time to happen of 5 years. Here is one of such event as an example:



Note: This is very much work in progress, and can differ from the final events.

You always have three options to pick from: the first one lets you focus on a more concentrated and focused government which is suited for tall players, while the last option is for expansionists, though these government reforms have their own sets of drawbacks.
The middle option is the more balanced of the two, but this will reflect in your government reform too.

Right now there are 10 final governments you can get: one default “Livonian Monarchy” and nice specialized reforms based on your decisions from the 6 events. Here is a short overview of them:


Note: modifiers are not set in stone yet.

The final part of the mission tree is revolving around developing your land. Highlight of it is a permanent -5% Tech Cost Reduction in your capital province after constructing 10 universities.

That was the Livonian path, so let us move on to the Crusader path of the Livonian Order:



Those who have read last week’s Development Diary will know what the Teutonic Mission Tree was about, so you can expect to see some recurring themes - like the construction of churches and mending the Schism between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

However, the Livonian Crusader missions are more focused on developing the Baltic and Russian lands; so basically a “Tall Crusader State”. The left side is mostly about keeping your country religiously stable and constructing churches and cathedrals - things you would expect from a faithful order of the Catholic faith. Highlights here are the missions “Build Cathedrals” and “Defender of the Faith”. With “Build Cathedrals” you unlock a estate privilege, which makes these tax buildings a little bit more useful:



Meanwhile, the mission “Defender of the Faith” requires you to be the Defender of the Catholic Faith for 25 consecutive years without any break. As a reward you get the following modifier:



The second column focuses on handling the Reformation while the middle one allows you to reform your knights and militarize them even further as they were. As the reward of the final mission you unlock the following government reform:


Note: modifiers are not final.

The final part of the mission tree is, well, about conquering and converting Ruthenia and Russia, as well developing these lands. “Support Our Brethren” is a mission where you are required to support other Catholic nations which border a powerful Heathen or Heretic country - most of the cases it is probably the Ottomans.

That was all for the Livonian Mission Tree!

Last but not least we take a look at what the free patch has in store.

Protestantism is a very versatile religion which has fallen off a little bit since Catholicism has gained its buffs. We don’t think Protestantism is actually that much weaker compared to Catholicism. However, a good way to make Protestantism more appealing we have decided to add three new Church Aspects:



Additionally, we are also experimenting with a way to make swapping church aspects actually worth your time. Whenever you select a new Church Aspect you gain a passive modifier for 10 years which increase the effectiveness in of the Church Aspect:



I want to stress out that it is an experimental buff and NOT final. Chances are high that this can be changed throughout the development of the patch.

Next is Reformed, which has received a more boring but direct buff to their fervors as they were rarely - if ever - picked by any nation; and this even before the buffs to Catholicisim.
As such the following buffs were given:

• Trade Focus: Gives now +10% Trade Steering additionally to the other modifiers
  
• War Focus: Gives now +20% Manpower Recovery Speed additionally to the other modifiers
  
• Stability Focus: Gives now -10% Development Cost additionally to the other modifiers

Moving on to other parts of the free content. As some might be aware, the nations of the Baltic states were lacking some ideas. With the help of community posts (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/new-idea-groups-part-7-estonia-karelia.885359/ , https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/nis-for-old-livonia-tags-livonian-order-riga-estonia-livonia.1024446/ , https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/national-ideas-for-livonian-order.868638/ ) we were able to add some proper ideas, and we want to thank you for the inspiration you gave us!

Here are the ideas for the following nations:

Livonian Order:

Livonia:

Latgalia:

Karelia (and before you ask: no, they will not get any content, but I wanted to mention here too):
Speaking of Livonia: the tag of Livonia is now a formable for Baltic German nations (which is also a new culture in the Baltic, followed by Riga and the Livonian Order).


Note: Yes, we are aware of the irony of giving them a blue color considering Prussia is next to them.

Meanwhile, a new tag has been added which represents the Latvian natives of the Baltic, which also has the old color of Livonia if somebody wished it to have:



Finally, one last word: the decisions about taking the Electorate of your subject were received very well, and people asked for it to become a standard mechanic. These decisions are now part of the base game and are no longer unlocked by the Teutonic mission tree. Additionally, the estate privilege “Grant Orthodox Autonomy” can now be unlocked through early missions of Poland, Lithuania and Venice too.

That was it for today! Next week we will take a look at the content of our favorite OPM, Riga, along with some extra government reforms we’re planning to add to the base game.

Until then I wish you all a nice week!

Greetings everyone!

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.

Until then I wish you all a nice week!

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!