Greetings everyone! And to anyone in the United States celebrating we wish you a happy 4th of July! (Shoutout to Canada day as well) For this USA themed spotlight we will be joined by the well-known Chewy/Chewyshoot who in addition to his content creation, has also dabbled in modding. With no further ado, we'll let Chewy take it away!


Hey y’all, Chewy here. Today I am happy to share my labor of love for the modding community, Land of the Free, a mod that completely overhauls the USA. Ryagi was kind enough to reach out and ask me to tell you a bit about my beloved mod on the Independence Day of my beloved country! So, to all my fellow Americans, happy 4th!

The mod adds a massive amount of content in North America, and a bit to England. The “new world” content includes (but is not limited to):

⦁ The USA with brand new national ideas, government reform, and unique mission tree including content up to and following a Civil War disaster.
⦁ The aforementioned American Civil War disaster, complete with Confederate separation and war.
⦁ A playable Confederate States with their own unique mission tree that addresses their history, culture, as well as the controversial topic of slavery within the nation. Of course, it’s hard to depict a nation such as this without addressing slavery, and I feel that it is presented in the most respectful, yet historically accurate way possible.
⦁ Alternate history paths for the USA as well as the CSA, allowing for post secession abolition and subsequent industrialization of post-bellum south.
⦁ Brand new religions that are mostly unique to North America including Methodism, Southern Baptist, and Latter-day Saints, otherwise known as Mormons.
⦁ New cultures as a part of a new culture group that covers the entirety of the continental USA.
⦁ Multiple bookmarks that allow you to start as early as 1444 to form the USA as England, or later starts in the game that allow you to play as a “newly independent USA” or an even later bookmark that allows you to play as the USA or CSA right as the Civil War has kicked off.



The mod requires the Domination DLC, and tweaks the English colonial mission tree a bit to allow for a natural formation of the Thirteen Colonies while following the flow of the mission tree. The goal is for someone playing to not know it was modded content unless they previously had played England and knew what to expect. The final mission of the branch, “Reorganize the Colonies” is the mission that transfers you to play as your colony on the American East Coast.



“something something no taxation without representation”

And upon finishing a small mission tree designated for the Thirteen Colonies, it’s time to go to war!
As it happened historically, various European nations will offer their help in the form of military leaders, ships, and manpower.



Once independent from the British there is plenty of flavorful events and missions that will lead you through the historical expansion and rise of the United States of America.


Of course, the institution of slavery that existed in the USA up until the 1860’s must be addressed, and this is what will lead to the inevitable Civil War.


However, upon finishing the disaster, the USA will unlock a VERY powerful portion of their mission tree. Without spoiling too much, you will be able to choose to make some major reformations within your government.


And the USA also has a government mechanic that was added alongside it’s 1.35 update to patch it for the Domination DLC. The mechanic is called “Government Trust” and just seems to fit.



There’s MUCH more content but I don’t want to spoil too much for you, and I encourage you to check out the mod yourself and give it a try. A lot of time and effort went into this project over about a year’s time, so I hope you enjoy!


We hope you enjoyed this quick look into Land of the Free. If you are feeling extra enthused to start spilling some tea into Boston the harbor, we encourage you to check out the mod on the steam workshop.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2677462796

In addition, if you want to hear more from Chewy you can check him out on youtube at both Chewyshoot and Chewbert
Until next time!

Greetings!

Today we released a minor hotfix to address one critical bug!

Save games should hopefully be unaffected - but if you have the possibility to start a new game that is always recommended.

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



#############################################################
######################## 1.35.5.0 ###########################
#############################################################

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed calculations of the Carolean Special Unit.



Old 1.35 changelogs:
1.35.4
1.35.3
1.35.2
1.35.1
1.35

Greetings, and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Dev Diary!

Today patch 1.35.4 was released, and with it we’re fixing most of the issues reported by the community after the launch of EUIV: Domination, including the most pressing ones that were already covered in the Roadmap DD, making more than 170 fixes. We hope that it improves the overall state of the game as per the feedback that we’ve received during the past week. For any further issues that are found while playing, please use the Bug Reports subforum to report bugs and the Changelog post for any questions or comments regarding the patch.

Along with the 1.35.4 patch we’re also releasing a new type of DLC, Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons, covering two countries for this release, China and Japan. Both of these can be found here:
https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/32797/Europa_Universalis_IV_History_Lessons_Bundle/

Let me explain a bit about what this is about, and why we are releasing this DLC now.

This project started around one year ago, its objective being to add some more immersion to EUIV while playing it, in the format of a podcast. After some design discussions and planning, the Team decided to create a new type of Music DLC - but instead of listening to new songs in the in-game audio player, the tracks will be composed of lessons about the history of a certain country, similar to podcasts’ episodes. To prepare for this release, we made changes in the Audio player that were already released with the 1.35 update - so, these new DLCs work pretty much the same as any other Music Pack, so they shouldn’t impact the stability of the 1.35.4 patch. And why did we decide to release the DLCs now, and not with 1.35? Basically, to dedicate most of our resources to the release of 1.35 and Domination, and to make sure that the release of the History Lessons was also done with the quality we wanted for them, so problems in one of the releases wouldn’t impact much on the other.

Taking into account the new content that we were aiming to create for EUIV: Domination, we decided to start with two of the countries in East Asia most attractive for our players, China and Japan, which also have a rich and engaging History in the time frame of 1444-1820. We were lucky enough to count for the project with two experienced podcasters, Laszlo Montgomery from ‘The China History Podcast’, and Isaac Meyer from ‘The History of Japan Podcast’. Along with the Team, they prepared and recorded the episodes, 26 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - China, and 35 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - Japan.

In the case of China, you will find out a lot of interesting contextual information about the Ming and Qing dynasties, how the Mandate of Heaven was handled, and the relationships between China and its neighbors. Meanwhile, the context for Japan is more focused on the different Daimyos that are present in EUIV in 1444, and the start, development and ending of the Sengoku Jidai, the civil wars that spread out in the country during the 15th and 16th centuries, and that finished with the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

We hope that you enjoy this new type of content as much as we’ve done while preparing it, specifically, those who love History as much as the members of the Team and I do. And speaking of me, I was also invited to record two special episodes of Laszlo’s and Isaac’s podcasts which will go live this week, in which we discuss how we worked on the project, and why is so interesting for us the historical context of Europa Universalis IV, and thus this project itself!

I also hope that you all have fun with the 1.35.4 patch of EUIV as well! Next week we will have the last DD before the summer break, in which I’ll make a retrospective of Domination, and talk a bit about the roadmap for the following months. Cheers, bye!

Greetings all!

Patch 1.35.4 is now live, containing fixes for many of the issues outlined in the earlier roadmap. You can also read the accompanying Dev Diary here.

Though we can't fully guarantee it, it should be safe to continue earlier save games with this patch - but if you have the possibility to start a new game that is always recommended.

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


#############################################################
######################## 1.35.4.0 ###########################
#############################################################

###################
# Gamebalance
###################

# Governments
- The Ordenanças government reform now properly grants Army Tradition.
- The English Monarchy T1 is now available for Great Britain which has been formed by a different tag than England.
- Tweaked the likelihood of the AI investing in Prussian militarization if they don't have an abundance of military monarch power.
- Added a fallback modifier for the Separate the Boyars from Court government reform.

###################
# Interface
###################

# Icons/Art
- Re-exported and added .dds files for achievement_chop_chop and achievement_kinslayer in the corresponding folder.
# Other
- Fixed several issues with localization.
- The parliament of Denmark will now be called "Folketing".
- Added a lot of missing description localization.
# Tooltips
- The Fleeing Serfs Cossack interaction now scopes to a random province, instead of a wrong province.
- Fixed the tooltip for Flood events in China.
- Improved tooltips for granting and revoking privileges.
- Updated the Expel Minorities tooltip.

###################
# Usermodding
###################

# Other
- Added a on_heir_disinherited action.

###################
# Script
###################

# Decisions
- The decision to form Siam no longer requires ADM tech 20.
# Events
- The Chinese flood events now check for appropriate provinces to apply to in all circumstances.
- There is now a 25% chance that the development does not get reduced by the flood.
- The Chinese flood events can no longer fire for the AI.
- The event "The Karma Kagyu School and the [Root.Monarch.Dynasty.GetName] Dynasty" now properly grants a subjugation CB.
- The Iberian Wedding now requires that Aragon and Castile are monarchies.
- The Castilian Civil War option that grants the Aragonese candidate, will now grant Isabel as it should, if possible.
- The event "End of the Castilian Civil War" now correctly takes away stability based on its outcome.
- The French event 'Treaty of the Lily Flower' now grants the option to refuse the treaty, but the AI will never pick it.
- Fixed an error that incorrectly attributed Crimea as a Tributary State to the Ottomans for players who do not own the Mandate of Heaven.
- Nurhaci is now spawned with his historical dynasty preset from the Manchu flavor events.
- The Urban event for the Ottomans won't fire until you have the money necessary to hire him in your treasury.
- Advisors granted via English flavor events will now spawn with the Angevin culture in mind if you are Anglois.
- The event Commercial Expansion in Alexandria will no longer fire continuously.
- The event "The Baronial Revolt" will not fire for Naples while they are at war.
- Nahuatl event Pochteca Spies now grants the Trade War CB for 10 years, instead of 152 years.
# Missions
- The French minor mission "Capture Paris" now properly grants claims on the French region.
- Chinese EoC missions will now not be available to Japan, since the latter already has its version of EoC missions in their file.
- The Angevin mission "Eliminate Burgundy" now takes into account land held by subjects of subjects.
- The Brandenburg Prussia mission that grants access to the Polish Age Ability now only takes into account development you own directly in the Polish region.
- The modifier "Tatar Vanguard" will not be removed for the Ottomans if Crimea is promoted to an Eyalet.
- The Ottoman mission "End the Persian Threat" now requires 20 provinces owned by you or a non-tributary subject, instead of 20 provinces directly owned by you.
- The Ottoman mission Collect the Siyasah now requires reform level 6 Government reforms while the Ottoman mission Expand the Devshirme requires reform tier 5.
- Removed an excess claim from the Portuguese mission "Settle Indonesia".
- The mission "End the Eyalet Rebellions" will now check for only eyalets and core eyalets instead of all subject types.
- The Korean mission "Defeat the Shogun" will now properly display its Harmonization reward when applicable.
- Fixed an error for Chinese warlord missions that did not grant the mil tech bonus.
- Improved the tooltip of the Mutual Trade System mission for the EoC for better readability.
- The mission to handle the Eyalet Revolts will no longer require you to have provinces in the Egypt and Persia regions.
- The mission to handle the Harem will no longer ask for ruler stats to be complete.
- Reorganized the requirements of the Russian mission "Most Holy Synod" for better readability.
- Emperor of China missions should no longer disappear if you already have access to them upon forming Manchu.
- The general for the Russian mission Dissolve the Streltsy has been lowered from 20 pips to 15 pips as a requirement.
# Setup
- Every level of the Brandenburg Gate monument now grants the same amount of militarization.
- The Prussian militarization tiers are now available to Germany as well as other countries that may gain access to it (modding).
- Fixed an issue with the trigger conditions for The Times of Trouble for Muscovy / Russia.
- Perm can now be annexed at the same date as other subjects under the starting setup of Muscovy.
- The Great Council of Mechelen will now properly disable the Dutch Revolt from ticking.
- The Unify China CB now targets all provinces in China, not just neighboring ones.
- The "Expand into X" Agenda for Noble/Cossack/Maratha etc estates will now request provinces to be held by you or any type of subject, including Tributaries and Colonies.
# Modifiers
- The modifier "Empowered Junkers" now correctly grants militarization for Prussia.
# Other
- The Slavic culture group has now dynamic names for the provinces.
- The Sisterhood of Jeanne d'Arc" government reform is now limited to theocracies only.
- The AI is now aware to pick the Yearly Mandate decree over other decrees to maintain the Mandate a bit easier.
- Celestial Reforms now cost 70 Mandate instead of 80. The minimum amount of Mandate to take a Celestial Reform remains 80 for the sake of the AI.
- The Potosi reward for Ming will now apply if the mine is controlled by a subject of the Ming.
- Álvaro de Luna now joins the Royalists during the Infantes of Aragon disaster.
- Flavor Events for new Rulers no longer fire when Junior Partner in a Personal Union.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- The Ottoman Siyasah Tax System government reform now properly changes between manpower and tax based on province religion compared to your religion.
- The Bektashi Order local organization no longer grants global Production Efficiency.
- The Decentralized Reform reward for the EoC mission Examination System now correctly grants Development Cost country-wide.
- Spawning Coal, while Smithian Economics is active, should now subtract 1 Base Production as the Manufactory of the old trade good is removed.
- The Duchy of Finland, when released by Russia as part of the latter's event Reward will now have proper borders.
- Japan now has proper access to the Port of Dejima mission.
- The modifier "Parliamentarian Authority" attributed to provinces, will now grant the proper amount of Monthly Devastation reduction.
- The mission "Protect the South Slavs" will no longer remove the "Hegemony over the Carpathians" modifier. The mission "Partition Poland" now also gives you Slovak as an accepted culture and will no longer have +10% Manpower in accepted culture provinces.
- The Russian decision "Proclaim the Emperor Title" will now properly request to have 90 Modernization.
- The event Fate of the Peasantry for Russia will not fire if Russia has no nobility.
- The Russian mission "Fate of the Peasantry" will now give 100 points for each category in case you complete it with no privilege active.
- The event "Fate of the Peasantry" will no longer add the respective estate privilege if you have already picked one before.
- Appease the Patriarchate now applies in every province that is part of a state with a Patriarchate.
- Completing the Ottoman Struggle for Power disaster now gives the Modernized Ottoman Government if you did not weaken the Harem. This means you have the Harem when you finish the disasters again.
- Fixed an issue where the Gascon Musket Company and the Order of Saint Joan didn't have the new unit models from the Domination DLC.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the Sisterhood of Jeanne d'Arc to have the proper government and ruler names if the modifier is missing.
- The government reform "Bureaucratic Rule" now increases the Harmonization Speed instead of decreasing it.
- "Reclaim Neumark” effect for Domination when the player is the Emperor is changed. Now, you gain 1 Imperial Authority for every 25+ Dev province you conquer.
- The EoC mission "Grand Coordinators" now has a non-DLC alternative reward.
- The tooltip information about gaining a PU CB on Portugal for Castile is now displayed better.
- The Catholic reward for the French mission regarding the French Wars of Religion is now granted for the properly displayed duration.
- The Spanish Armada mission now properly displays the conditions for getting the Restoration of Union CB on ENG/GBR.
- The event "A new Imperial Capital?" for the Ottomans will no longer grant you territorial cores outside of Italy when you decide to move your capital to Rome.
- The estate agenda "Befriend <Rival Country>'s Rivals" will not be available if you are at war with the rival's rival country.
- The Anglican Aspect unlocked by the English mission Piety of the State for the Protestant Faith is now correctly granted and unlocked.
- Zimbabwe will no longer magically create production development by building and demolishing farm estates.
- The Tribe's estate privilege "Autonomy to the Tribes" will no longer prevent the Tribes from losing estate loyalty when you seize land.
- The event "The Subjugation of Austria" will no longer cause Austria to be inherited by another Christian country in very rare situations.
- Fixed a bug that prevented advisors outside of your culture group to grant monthly modernization.
- Land of the Christian Sun T1 is now properly logged as a T1 for Republic / Theocratic Japan.
- The system of Councils for Spain will only allow one bonus at a time.
- France has access to Strong Duchies after integrating all their Appanages.
- The reform "Representatives of the Crown" will now work with Appanages.
- The Sino-Altaic culture now has proper access to Subutai's Strategies gov. Reform.
- Fixed an issue of the "Protectors of Eastern Christianity" modifier being removed too soon for Japan.
- Estate privilege "Noble Contracts" will now properly not subtract loyalty from nobles getting their land seized for Brandenburg and Prussia.
- The Teuton AI will no longer kill itself by attacking other HRE members while inside the Empire under regulations by the Emperor.
- Fixed issues regarding canals in savegames.
- Reactivated base-game missions for Ming and East Asian countries in the absence of the Domination DLC.
- Tibetan Horses will only be granted and permanent if a subject owns Lhasa.
- Completing Mission Crisis of the Ming Dynasty no longer unlocks Government Reforms up to Tier 10.
- Fixed AI not raiding Coast.
- Fixed the overlap of the name and parliament button in the province view.
- Support for conditional scaled modifiers for government mechanics.
- Open Store Page will now use Steam Overlay Browser before opening an external browser.
- Disinheriting your heir as Aragon will no longer create a personal union between Navarra and Castile.
- Banner cavalry now has a static cost of 0.1 Corruption. The discount they get has been reduced from -0.1 to -0.04.
- Banner cavalry cost can't be brought down below 0 to remove corruption for free.
- Dismantle HRE tooltip shows electors' names again.
- Prestige gain in Dismantle HRE tooltip is no longer visible if it's 0.
- Effects are now shown in the Dismantle HRE button tooltip.
- Vassals no longer have a merchant icon next to them in the subject's view.
- Vassals now have a vassal-type icon in the subject view that shows what modifiers they get and give their overlord.
- Added a missing new line in requirements to maintain a personal union tooltip.
- Added missing localization for the history log about incidents starting in the HRE.
- Fixed peace treaty terms changing after reopening the peace treaty interface with a province ceded in a state that is pillaged.
- When two vassals that are allied to each other are being annexed, one declaring an independence war no longer results in the other being instantly annexed.
- Fixed issue where forts un-mothballing cause movement to be recalculated.
- Eyalet subjects are no longer displayed as automatically joining Overlords war.
- Fixes so you can call on senior allies when going to war against a vassal.
- Taking land in war no longer occasionally loses all crownland.
- fixed AI over-prioritizing militarization.
- Fixed state view interactions going out of the screen on smaller resolutions.
- After accepting a Request to Share Maps from another nation, the popup that appears shows correctly who is the receiver.
- Naval doctrine icon now shows the correct icon and the "No doctrine" icon is back instead of showing the first Naval doctrine.
- Added an alert for Slacken Recruiting Standards.
- can_use_peace_treaty now doesn't check if both countries are at war.
- Fixed Expand Empire Casus Belli not showing up.
- Fixed fleets not being able to merge after repairing.
- Fixed mine depletion resulting in decimal development.
- Form Coalition action is now available at 50 Aggressive Expansion, not 51.
- Fixed incorrect number for sailors increase in macro builder tooltips.
- Added information about government power being frozen in the tooltip.
- Galley flagships can now be built.
- The “Wants your provinces” modifier can no longer overflow into positive values.
- Reinforcement cost is now capped at 10%.
- Fixed occupation priority to match that from the siege screen.
- Ideas taken within 1 year of the first country now correctly give innovativeness.
- Fixed fleet speed modifier applying two times for flagships.
- Fixed heir not being removed as a military leader in define_heir effect.
- Fixed special units not being able to be hired when below 0 Absolutism.
- Fixed colonial range map mode showing incorrect effective distance.
- Fixed provinces are colored green in the macro builder when trying to build special units even if the limit has been reached.
- Mercenary companies no longer use the origin province owner's land maintenance for their maximum morale.
- Destroy and add building effects now update the building window properly if they are used together.
- Added overflow checks to variable effects.
- Sich Rada government ability now spawns Cossack cavalry and infantry in a 3-1 ratio.
- Mercenary condottieri are now allowed to use the mercenary drilling modifier of the original country.
- Random Candidate Bonus ability is now distributed in all categories instead of one.
- CAT tag can be used again in the script.
- Added a development cap for development-based growth of government power.
- Tribal allegiance now can't go down by more than 0.25 monthly from development.
- Define ruler now changes the original dynasty.
- Fixed Cavalry to Infantry ratio from Born to the Saddle leader trait not working.
- Fervor will no longer decrease the upper limit when a Focus is selected.
- Condottieri can't loot provinces of countries that the renting country isn't at war with.
- Changed the text of unoccupied forts requirement in peace deals.
- Enemy Zone of Control no longer extends to tributary land.
- Special naval units no longer show the cost and build button on provinces with the inland sea.
- Fixed outliner tooltip for why integration can't progress.
- The mandate Growth tooltip now includes the multiplier.
- Fixed the wrong government name mentioned in the debate failed message.
- Effects text in monument tooltips won't be shown if there are no effects applicable.
- Added information about overextension in Grant Province Screen when it would go above 100% for subjects.
- Fixed overlapping text in the naval macro builder.
- Added a missing line break in the Current Trade Power tooltip.
- Cleaned the Found Indian Company decision reward.
- Added a missing line break to the monument upgrade effect.
- Fixed sorting by diplomatic cost in the peace treaty screen.
- AI will ignore truces with enemy subjects in the war declaration screen as they do with manual call-ins via diplomatic action.
- Add a finish date to the tooltip for vassal cores.
- Declare war screen now shows HRE emperor allies and counts them into force summary. Setting them as co-belligerents is now allowed.
- Fixed trade protectorates not being able to be canceled.
- Expand Infrastructure Cost Modifier will be replaced for players without Leviathan DLC.
- AI shouldn't be able to call Players to war when they are already at war with a nation AI declared on.
- Updated the Expel Minorities tooltip.

We're excited to bring you a more graphical-oriented Mod Spotlight. This time, to illustrate some of the points, we're covering a small collection of Mods made by experienced modder, Plati. Enjoy!


Hello dear community!

Plati with you today, going to take a moment of your time to talk about my ‘visual input’ in Europa Universalis IV modding ecosystem.

I’ll focus almost exclusively on a select few of my visual mods (part of Plati’s Visuals workshop collection) with minor mentions of my input in Paradox Converter teams work. I'll delve into the technical aspect of visuals and explain the thought process of mine when making these visual alterations - might be helpful to my fellow modders.

Before we move on to individual cases, let me name the main principle I am trying to follow in altering EU4’s look and visual feel: ‘Aesthetic Unity’ or ‘Visual Truthfulness’. In the simplest sense, if you alter or add graphics, it's best that your input fits into the game seamlessly, ergo you need to keep saturation, color palette, size and feel as close to the original visual direction as possible. I will demonstrate it as we go on.

Let’s start with the most recent one: Plati’s Tech Pictures.



A player spends a sizable percentage of his playtime looking at the interface. Apart from the numbers and map borders the UI can often seem ‘too static’. This mod attempts not only to merely add something to stare at but also to set visual milestones for the player to actually see the history progress as his game progresses. 'Oh wow, so we are having muskets now? Sweet!’ ‘Oh wow, we learned to eat citrus to avoid scurvy? Sweet!’



A technology icon in this sense represents scientific or cultural advancement. While it may be easy with inventions or tools, ‘social innovations’ tend to be problematic to portray:

1. Vitruvian man, often used as a symbol for Renaissance (thought). This one is a no-brainer.
2. Galileo Galilei, believed to be one of the ‘fathers of scientific method’. Historical date of the technology he represents takes place during his lifetime (Scientific Experimentation 1583).
3. While it may be seemingly more appropriate and recognizable to use the famous ‘We the People’, the technology this image represents (The Constitution) is set historically in 1687 - the same year the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience was adopted - the document you see in the picture.
4. Frontispiece of Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes). A no-brainer here. If you hear the word ‘Sovereignty’ anywhere, chances are you are gonna see this image attached. Though, instead of a black and white pencil sketch, I took the liberty to add color.
5. Montesquieu, considered to be one of the fathers of modern interpretation of separation of powers. While this idea is in no way exclusive to him, the historical date of technology he represents is set during his lifetime and academic work (Separation of Powers 1745).

Now the pictures themselves include a mix of historical paintings, mash-up-photoshops and ai made images. Using an existing painting may be problematic:



Another tricky part was depicting advancement in Firearms: If you want to show a difference between a Matchlock musket and a Flintlock musket, you need to demonstrate the firing mechanism, zoomed in. There are plenty of images online available to take historical weaponry and depict them. However, simply pasting an image into a frame won't do:



1. Saturated, bland red background and image of pistol just slapped on top. This is as low effort as possible.
2. An overlay added on top. Looks better, but still terrible.
3. A black outline was added around the pistol. It's good to distinguish something you want to highlight, but on its own - lackluster. Also, no shadow around the frame.
4. The color is less saturated to fit into the EU4 overall feel, but the pistol still looks bland and uninspiring. The blurry shadow makes the pistol harder to recognize. More edits are required.
As we often see in video games, small icons have focus on contrast, simpler backgrounds, gradients, outlines/shadows and other methods to highlight an object in a very small picture. Even if its something simple like a knife or healing potion, make it shine! Make it play!

A much smaller mod - Plati’s Shield Frames - also was made with Aesthetic unity in mind:



Now, interface modding in EU4 is not merely spawning something pretty. There is some coding to do and values to be adjusted for your changes to take effect. For this reason, Mod-compatibility might be problematic, causing counter-intuitive errors and mish-mashes: if two mods alter the same .gfx file, for example, then either of them (or both) will be busted and dysfunctional. This is one of the reasons why mods are itchy and scratchy and you often need to create a separate 'compatibility mod'. I try to make mods as compatible and non-intrusive as possible, but one can go only so far.


And newly added images must be 'defined' separately as well.

Needless to say, this is the least enjoyable part of the entire process. However, if you are not attentive and pedantic and misinput code, you may completely mess up the textures/ui:

As we can see here (Atlas Aesthetic mod), a minute thing like incorrectly defining map resolution may result in Water texture becoming completely invisible. I did not like the 5632x2048 resolution limit and wanted to enlarge the picture (otherwise the sea monsters get fuzzy on zoom-in). Trying to bypass this limit either crashed the game or made the map blank. Just to let you know there are engine/code limitations on what you can draw as well.

All in all, if one wants to edit game graphics without doing the complete overhaul, it's healthy to follow the principle of Aesthetic unity. Games have their feel, mood and tones meticulously set by developers. If someone drops an ENB, it may look cool at first glance, but may also erase artistic expression carefully installed by an artist. And EU4 is one of the brightest examples of stylish, yet functioning and unintrusive user interfaces I've seen. I try to compliment it whenever I make changes. In my input in CK3-EU4 converter mod, I added a number of flavor events and prepared event pictures for them. While I used a number of existing art as reference, instead of merely putting them through the 'Pencil Sketch' filter, I aimed to draw them in a manner they would be indistinguishable from vanilla event art.




And this is where I conclude. I hope I did not bore you with technicalities - thought it would be exciting to bring you more of a 'behind the scenes' and 'inside authors mind' showcase. As a final goodbye, here’s pictures of some creatures that served as reference for Atlas Aesthetic:




Community Ambassador Ryagi back, hope you enjoyed this spotlight as much as I did!
If you're like me and sometimes scroll all the way to the bottom first before deciding if a post is worth reading in full, then hello! I fully endorse scrolling back up :p Personally I think Plati did an astounding job at both articulating and visually representing their points.

Here you can find a link to Plati's visual workshop collection featuring their work shown here. If you have any suggestions for future coverage let us know. Perhaps we could even bring Plati back to have a look at their more gameplay-oriented mods!

In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this spotlight. Hope to see you next time!

Grandest LAN registration is now open!

Tickets are sold on a first come first served basis, so we encourage you to register now if you are interested in this unique multiplayer IRL roleplaying experience.

Find out more and register now at: https://eu4.turbolarp.space/

Greetings everyone! EU community team member Ryagi here, today we bring you another Mod Spotlight.

Since our last mod spotlight we've had a few folks ask us to bring our previously covered mods to steam, and so today we can begin with that. We plan to post these retrospective spotlights until we're all caught up to our "live" spotlights. In addition, we'll continue to post up to date spotlights here when they are out too.

Please note this spotlights original posting was on the 17th of March 2023 and can be found on our forums here. If you've already read that spotlight, there is nothing new here. If this is the first you're seeing it, enjoy!


Hello and welcome to our first-ever EU4 mod spotlight!

We consider mods and their communities a core pillar of our EUIV ecosystem, to showcase some of the amazing creations you the community have fostered we want to make this a semi-regular series giving modders a chance to show off their work.

For our pioneer feature, we’ll be looking at Europa Expanded. Without further ado, we'll let Stiopa and Lord Varangian introduce themselves and their work on EE.


Hello Europa Universalis Enthusiasts!

We are the Europa Expanded team and since 2018 we’ve been working on expanding your Europa Universalis Experience. With years of content design experience, in our mod, we strive to create a player-made update for each subsequent area that we work on. Our goal is to enrich your gameplay while also keeping the experience familiar to what you are already used to. It is natural then, that some of our scripts have even made it into vanilla.

In this post, we will present just a glimpse of what our mod has to offer and what direction we are heading in. So, to give you an idea of what our mod is about, let us look closer into what our latest update has brought forth.

One of our latest major updates, The Caliphate, added over a thousand unique missions for 30+ nations, giving much love to the entire Muslim world, which has not seen any updates since Cradle of Civilization in 2017.




To present our mission trees would take a while, so here’s a roster containing just a few of the newer ones for your viewing pleasure:

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Our mission trees are not just any mission trees, for along with them, we are also making innovations in content creation, introducing Incident Mission Trees, Subject-Oriented Mission Trees, Preview System for Branching Missions.

And then there are the countless mechanics in the mod….We have made dozens upon dozens of mechanics for the mod. All of them seek to bring flavour to regions, nations, and even dynasties. Our latest and more glamorous additions are the:


The Abbasid caliphate mechanic allows you to serve as the puppet master of the Abbasid Caliph, exerting his influence over the Muslim World for your own gain, later being able to claim the Caliphate for yourself.



a measure of how legitimate is your Timurid dynasty. Your key to gaining support for founding a new nation.



The conquest frenzy of the Timurid Hordes. The more you win, conquer and raze, the more buffs you'll get. But inactivity will over time render it useless.


Expanding your trade empire through diplomacy. Not through the sword, but through the pen. It has been used for several nations, from Hormuz, the Hansa, Mughals and it will only find more uses in the future.


That is not to say the rest of the mechanics are lacking. Japan itself has the Onin War mechanic, the struggle between the Hosokawa and Yamana clan, in which you can choose a side to support similarly to the League War. And lastly, the prestigious Habsburg dynasty has access to the Habsburg Glory mechanic, allowing you to either spread your dynasty, or to establish loyal allies.

You’d be mistaken if you thought that missions and mechanics is all that we do - our commitments lie far beyond that. We also add hundreds of new events, dozens of decisions and so on
Below is a selection of other components that we touch upon, including, but not limited to:

Government Reforms. While we have always had some commitment to adding new government reforms, we have recently decided to expand our horizons and are planning to add an increasing amount of government reforms.


We’re also adding new estates. 1.12 “The Caliphate” itself has added two new Estates, the Berber Tribes for Maghrebi nations, and the Turkic Tribes for Aq and Qara Qoyunlu. We also have some older estates and are itching to add more of them, as we go on.



Our focus doesn’t lie just in adding more estates. We are also interested in adding more variety in privileges for the default estates. Here’s but a small selection of new estate privileges from our latest patch.

We are also committed to updating old content. In “The Caliphate”, we have gone through most of muslim events, making the options more balanced, trying to add more choice to your average event and making mysticism options more viable.



But flavour isn't necessarily all full of sunshine. There's plenty of pitfalls and disasters that you may found yourself spiralling towards. Whether it be you, or the AI, you will certainly feel the impact of the disasters showcased below.


We do, of course, add much more than that, but I’d like to keep the rest as a mystery for the people that do choose to explore this mod themselves, which I highly encourage to do so. ;)

And for the people who are wishing to play the mod, here's a map of all the nations we've touched as of now, to a greater or lesser degree:







We also have bookmarks designed specifically to serve as a guide for finding flavorful tags, so make clever use of those!

If you are interested in following our work more closely, we post weekly Developer Diaries on Stiopa's Reddit Account. Currently, the developer diaries stopped, but they will resume as soon as we are ready to showcase 1.13.

If you want to experience the mod second-hand, check out the following videos:

• England into Angevin Empire by Laith
  
• Brunei into Malaya by Zlewikk
  
• Granada into Andalusia by Chewyshoot
  
• Timurids Horde by Quarbit

Now, I sure hope that I peaked your interest. If you are not yet familiar with the mod, you can find it on the workshop:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2164202838


as well as Paradox Plaza

That would be it for this mod showcase. I wish you all a cheery & lovely Friday!

Hello everyone!

I am Ryagi, a Community Ambassador on Europa Universalis IV. Countless Modders do amazing work on their projects and the modding community they have built up is worth highlighting!

For a brief while, we have been hosting mod spotlights written by the Mod authors themselves over on our forums. Today we wanted to bring them to you directly here on steam. Let us know if this is something you are interested in seeing more of here! For today's spotlight we look at the ever popular Extended Timeline

It's likely this mod needs no introduction, but you may be less familiar with the mod author, Qweytr. We hope you enjoy their showcase today! For those of you who may not be familiar, you are in for a treat. Without further ado, I'll let Qweytr take it away.


Hi, I'm Qweytr, the developer of the Extended Timeline mod. If you are interested enough in EU4 mods to be reading this, you most likely have already heard of it, but just in case you are not, the basic idea of Extended Timeline is to allow you to start at any date you like and play for as long as you like. Due to limits of the game engine, any date in this case covers only dates after 2AD though, but that is already more than enough work for one person.

It was between 12 and 14 years ago, after my first full playthrough of EU3 was cut short by the 1820 end date that I knew I had to improve things. After that is has been a lot of work, though sometimes with breaks of several months, but at other times working on the mod every waking hour for a month straight. And thanks to that work the mod has had a very accurate starting setup for a good while now, with 800 new tags, all with historically accurate borders and rulers for every single day. It's not perfect of course, but neither is vanilla EU4, which is the level of historical accuracy I have aimed for and mostly reached and in certain aspects even surpassed.


Eurasia at the 1206 start date

The start dates are all well and good, but this is a game after all, so what happens after you unpause. For a long time, the answer was unfortunately not enough. Although I have made hundreds of events and decisions covering many important points of history like spread of Christianity, fall of Rome and rise of Islam, spread out over such a long timespan these events have to some felt quite sparse.


[center]A couple examples of the many events I have made, belonging to the event chains to decentralize Japan and the rise of Islam[/center]


It is of course inevitable that the vanilla period, which has a whole team of professionals adding content for a much shorter timespan would have more flavor than the parts I have added. It is simply not possible for one man to match Paradox in that aspect. But I never thought I would be doing Extended Timeline alone from start to finish. I always dreamed that once the basic fundamentals are in place, people interested in certain regions or time periods would contribute to the mod and help me flesh those parts out. And recently this dream has been closer to becoming true than ever before.

By far the biggest recent addition was the integration of More Missions: Extended Timeline REDUX sub-mod by World's Smuggest Detective into the main mod, adding a total of 29 new mission trees, 5 great projects, 3 disasters and some other smaller additions. Below are a few examples of the recently added mission trees.









Another recent addition is a new religion called Ecclesia Unita, which represents a form of Christianity reformed to prevent the Great Schism. This represents a kind of content I would not make myself, as I focus on things that happened historically, but since this was all done by LimonenZitrone I had no problems with adding it to the mod. He also made a new decision to form Germany for the medieval kingdom of Germany. Previously the vanilla decision was available already in the middle ages, even though it was clearly meant to represent the forming of modern Germany.



Next we have events for Ostsiedlung, meaning Germans settling down in the Slavic lands in the eastern edges of the Holy Roman Empire. They were made by Jey the Count as the first taste of the more comprehensive additions he is planning for medieval Europe.


[center]A couple events from the Ostsiedlung event chain[/center]

The most recent of all the contributions was a new main theme by Utopia, which you can also listen to on YouTube. It was added to the mod just two weeks ago along with a minor addition by Terkaza to the Zunist religion.



Those were all of the biggest contributions to the mod over the past two months. I want to specially thank not only the people mentioned above, but everyone who has contributed to the mod in the past. Extended Timeline would not be where it is today without the awesome community around it.


And we the whole EU4 team want to thank Qweytr for their years of hard work and dedication towards Extended Timeline as well as the EU4 modding community as a whole.
That wraps up today's spotlight. Though relatively short we hope you enjoyed it! Feel free to ask any questions about Extended Timeline and do let us know if you have any suggestions for future mod spotlights.

Extended Timeline can be on the steam workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=217416366

Previous mod spotlights:

• Europa Expanded
  
• Ante Bellum
  
• The Idea Variation
  
• Dirinas

Have suggestions for future spotlights? Let us know in the comments!

Join us on November 17th - 20th 2023 in Czocha Castle, Poland as The Europa Universalis IV Grandest LAN returns! For more information: visit https://eu4.turbolarp.space


Tickets going on Sale June 15th!

Hello everyone! I’m Kuba, Release Engineer & Interim QA Coordinator here at Paradox Tinto and today I’d like to talk about some known issues and our plan for upcoming weeks.

After making 1.35.2 and following the hotfix, we addressed most of the pressing issues that could negatively impact your gameplay and could be prepared and tested in the time we had available. That being said, we are not yet done with improvements and bug fixing, as there are issues that are brought up by the community in the forums as well as discovered by our internal testing. The following list is the Known Issues to let you know that we are actively working on fixing these.

• Issues regarding the canals, that that makes them disappear or not appear at all
  
• Issues with missing Expand Empire Casus Belli
  
• Further fixes for the events of the Chinese floods
  
• Issues related to Taking land in war result in losing all crownland

Also, we are preparing for other less prominent issues, which are nevertheless important to us. Some examples would be:

• France has access to Strong Duchies after integrating all their Appanages
  
• Issues with Land of the Christian Sun reform for Republic / Theocratic Japan
  
• Siam’s Ideas Rebalance
  
• Fixes in the game translations
  
• Around 100 more upcoming bug fixes like those!

Those examples were chosen to give you an idea of what kind of issues we will be fixing in this patch as well. As you probably noticed I mentioned weeks instead of days, which means the next patch which will be 1.35.4 will come out probably next month, as we want to properly test all changes, especially the balance changes, so we need more time to do it.

We will be monitoring all the bug reports and social media for other issues as well to ensure that our focus is on the bugs that are annoying our community the most. While I cannot promise any particular fix at this point, we will attempt to prioritize and fix as many as we can.

This also means that we won't be posting new development diaries soon, but we will keep the communication open to keep you all informed of our intentions and plans.