Aug 2, 2024

Community Mod Spotlight - Imperium Universalis

Europa Universalis IV - PDXRyagi

Welcome back to another Mod Spotlight! Unfortunately this one was far too gargantuan to fit into a single steam post. (We tried). So the full version including a map and mission tree overview can be found over on our main Forum post

We'd encourage you to check it out if you want to hear more about the specific starts IU has to offer. Otherwise, enjoy the rest of the post!

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Imperium Universalis is a mod a lot of the EU4 community likely has heard of or seen at least once, but despite all the years and major rewrites of the mod, we are still around and being worked on!

But for those that don’t know about Imperium Universalis, it is a mod attempting to depict Europe, North Africa, and most of Asia from 612 BC up until about 200 CE, encompassing the Achaemenids, Macedon, Mauryan Empire, and even the first Chinese dynasties. To do this, the mod is very, very different from vanilla in many key ways, although certainly not the most.

Before getting to those key differences, overviewing the map itself is more important.

The world, 612 BC

In 612 BC, the world is incredibly divided, with regions that saw previous stability falling into chaos as civil wars, upstart nations, and new religions come to dominate them. The Assyrian Empire is facing a losing war against the upstart Babylon, having lost Nineveh the day the mod begins. In Anatolia, Scythians and native Anatolians are vying for dominance as the Median empire looks on, and in the east, China is in the middle of the Spring and Autumn period - the old Zhou dynasty has mostly collapsed, but various Hegemons vie for power, claiming to protect what's left of the Zhou. However, if the region becomes consolidated enough, the Warring States period will begin, ushering in a new era of chaos...

IU features a long list of dates to play from, although some do not have as much content as we’d like. Generally, the earlier the startdate, the more content and balance there will be. I will explain notable startdates and the specific content they are meant to display further within the spoiler. If you want a start without waiting for many buildings or other milestones to unlock via tech - you should probably start in 474 or 490!

It’s time to get into more specifically how the mod plays out, in-game.

IU features a custom pop system, with 3 classes of population: Upper Class, Commoners, and Tribal/Rural pops. Upper Class grants more wealth and goods, Commoners provide decent wealth and goods but also manpower, and Tribal/rurals grant more manpower but less wealth.
These pops will grow naturally over time to their respective Cap, determined by Buildings, Terrain, Center of Trade, Monuments, and various other modifiers.

In addition to changing Development, IU naturally also changes the buildings from vanilla, featuring many more buildings, in many more categories. These buildings range from regular tax-collecting buildings, to bathhouses, and to apothecaries, and everything inbetween. Alongside these, we also feature unique buildings, granting powerful bonuses to those rich enough to build them.

We have many more Institutions to fit with our extended playtime as well, progressing from Writing, Coinage, and Siegecraft, all the way to Blast Furnaces, Advanced Irrigation, and Engineering. These Institutions have a wide range of effects, and their spread is more, well, spread out, in areas well developed enough to receive them. There’s no silk road yet to transport knowledge, so you’ll have to invent it in your own area over time.

IU contains 8 ages throughout its timeline, and these ages contain MANY more abilities than vanilla, to account for the various polities and empires that may exist at any given age. The first few ages last about 80-90 years, but they begin lasting longer as the ages pass. The expanded GUI here is thanks to the creator of the Ages Reformed mod, MDoulos. (You can check out his spotlight on Ages Reformed here)

The entire world has been reshaped religiously, with there not being any huge blobs of “Animist” or some other generic Pagan religion. Each region has at least one, or multiple, religions to represent local customs and beliefs, many of which having some mechanic. These mechanics are typically cults, or other deity worship.

Government types have seen some reformatting, with Theocracies being reused to represent Oligarchies instead. Playing as tribals will typically take a lot longer to reform out of tribalism than in vanilla, but tribals also receive strong bonuses if they find themselves in a war with a more organized nation. Republics, and Monarchies are generally as in vanilla, but all gov types have seen reforms fully overhauled.

Government reforms have been fully changed from vanilla, with there being 14 Republic tiers, 14 Oligarchic tiers, 15 Monarchy tiers, and 11 Tribal tiers. Some tier reforms are shared between government types, but there are always specific tiers that add government specific bonuses. Republics and Oligarchies, of course, can adjust their term limits, along with all being able to choose from various bonuses. Tribals, get the choice to reform into the 3 other gov types, or stay tribal if they wish.

Economy

The Economy in IU is much more tuned than most other mods, with modifiers and mechanics in place to both make certain playstyles somewhat more lucrative, and nerf those same playstyles if they become excessive.

One of these more lucrative mechanics, is that when you Annex a nation, either through war, or through diplomacy, you attain their Treasury. This means annexing a few OPM’s can net you enough cash to fund a few Manufacturies in your homeland. This however, has a downside. Done excessively, or without checking, your Inflation can begin to skyrocket if not checked.

As seen in the above image, Inflation will increase on its own without anything holding it down, and if you go beyond 4%, even Economy Ideas won’t bring it back down to 0%. Paying it down with ADM Mana, is also increased in cost, making Inflation a threat to your expansion if you take too much in wars.

There are some decisions to counteract Inflation from ruining your run, as well as bankruptcy heavily decreasing it, so it is recoverable. These will come at their own costs, though, but not taming Inflation will be much worse.

As with any mod or game representing this era of history, slavery, in many forms, was abundant. From state-owned slaves, to pseudo-serfdom, there were many variants of this. To try and represent the vast possibilities and gradients, we have a slaves estate, which holds the laws governing the rest of the mechanics for slavery. Beware though, having too many, will lead to intense unrest and other negatives.

The population of Slaves will increase or decrease over time depending on the laws set in the Estate, and the amount Liberated will join your regular Population in your provinces over time. Slaves can either exist ambiguously and add to your global Slave Production, contributing to global Goods Produced %, or be placed in Provinces with an appropriate Manufactury, or a Production building, directly increasing goods there.

Placing Slaves can be incredibly lucrative in provinces with Urban Population, and a valuable Trade Good, for example. It may be worth your Slaves for these provinces and letting others contribute to the global modifier, but that’s up to the player. You can, of course, distribute them in all your Provinces, but you will get a much lower global Goods Produced modifier.

The amount of slots per province will be increased by the production building (1 per level) and the manufactory, if your Slave Estate laws allow for that type to be used.

Admin stress is the main driver behind this balancing, and it works through a modifier that begins applying at 400 development, and increases every ~400 development after, for 12 levels. The modifier lowers income modifiers, while increasing corruption, which the player is meant to pay off with cash, further limiting their treasury.

With Admin Stress, the player will find their treasury empty if they mismanage their economy, expand before they’re in a good situation, or take too much non-valuable land for themselves. It is manageable if you pace your expansion as tech and your country develop, but rushing expansion before your economy is ready will cripple you, and perhaps lead to a collapse, or at least shrinkage

Other Nation-specific content not mentioned available to view on the forums

But, that’s just stuff that exists in the 3.1.2 version. We have been hard at work, and although we are not close to a release, there are many things that have been added or improved upon.

Future content preview

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There’s a lot of changes too small to be given their own section, but too impactful to go un-noted. So, I’ll list some of those here:

Decisions, have all been given icons and colours to help make it easier to identify which are which and of those, what ones may be useful to you.

Hegemonies have been reworked to fit the theme better, being easier to achieve, leading to countries that were Hegemons attaining them more realistically.

Many flavour events have been added across the globe, an example being the Volscians getting an event to purchase a city from Tarquinia. 2 Provinces have also been added near Volscia. Can you spot them?

Army Professionalism has been entirely reworked, partly inspired by MEIOU, to work as an equilibrium. Balanced by many things - Idea groups, Government type, Government Organization, Decisions - it will go up & down over a game depending on actions and routes taken.

Along side this, the Slacken Recruitment button has been changed to impact the new system properly, and be slightly more impactful after disabling.

AI will now place slaves in its provinces, albeit they are not as smart as players with using them.

Socii have also seen another full overhaul, with the major annoyances with the old system flattened over. Dissatisfaction now works as a custom gov mechanic, allowing the player to see at a glance where they’re at. This also means that the modifier increases linearly instead of in steps, stopping sudden changes in liberty desire.

Along with Dissatisfaction being a bar, 3 new minor bars are present, representing Administrative, Diplomatic, and Military leverage over your Socii. Accompanying these are 3 buttons. Calling your Socii to wars will work as the normal button does but for all Socii at once, just a time-saver. The other 2 do new things. The 2nd, “Enforce Roman Rule”, will allow you to annex one Socii regardless of the current Socii Ratio. The 3rd, “Overenlist Socii Troops” gives an Estate Privilige to the Socii Estate that will lower reinforcement manpower costs for your army, alongside taking 10% of each Socii’s manpower.

The Socii Estate has many other privileges I won’t go over here, but many of them will require parliament issues to be passed. They buff either the Socii, Socii and your provinces, and some may penalize Rome slightly in favor of granting the Socii some privilege.

Some other notable Rome changes are:
The name of Rome will change more throughout the early parts of a game to reflect the current situation.
An event has been added early in the mission tree to colonize Circeii.
Some events are now present for Punic-Roman early relations.
Romanization is locked behind Parliament Issues.
Definitely more.

Anatolia now begins even more chaotic than previously, with central Anatolia now more divided. Upon Scytheni’s invasion of Cimirria, the Lydians will get an event to invade and subjugate Phrygia, alongside a powerful modifier for expansion, turning it into a buffer state between the two powers. At the conclusion of the Assyrian collapse, should Babylon win, Cilicia gains independence.

The Scytheni can then attempt an invasion of Cilicia, which they will likely fail in, or more likely; Media will invade the Scytheni and swallow the majority of them whole, leaving the northern coast to splinter into independent states.

Alongside Anatolian changes, the Caucasus has had a 2nd go-over and has been adjusted with different countries, cultures, and a new religion in the area.

There have been an immense amount of small QOL changes, or balancing changes, to China. I cannot cover all of these, but I can note the biggest ones. Such as, the eastern coastline, and all rivers in China, have been adjusted to be more accurate to sources depicting the era. Including redirecting and thinning the navigable rivers, more rivers have been added all across China, no longer having areas barren of rivers where there should be.

The Papacy mechanic has also been integrated properly into China, with new images, sprites, and some of its interactions being reworked to do different things.

Unifying China should be much less tedious also, as the decision’s requirements are no longer tied to owning every single Chinese religion province.

And last, but definitely not least, something that may come far, far in the future…

IU’s pop system is something the mod has kept for a very long time - and while this rework would not do away with having a pop system, it would see IU’s completely supplanted by something much better for performance, and that would allow us to represent many more things, with much better accuracy. With help and permission from the Atlas Novum team, we have adapted their pop system, and building array, to fit within IU.

In its current implementation, 1 pop represents 1,000 people, instead of the previous 1 to 10,000. This allows us to better represent the disparity between Rural and Urban provinces much better, as EU4 doesn’t much like having 1 dev provinces all over the place.

The other 2 dev types, no longer represent any population types. Upper class, tax, is now representing Wealth, a cumulative approximation of, well, the amount of wealth in a province.
Commoners, Production, is now Infrastructure, which will increase province ‘Civilization’; required for upgrading certain buildings, along with increasing Population and Wealth growth.

Along with allowing more granularity in population, this system removes the RNG that plagued the old population systems, and you can now see - and predict - exactly how much your population is growing in each province. Wealth, also grows autonomously, but you can manually invest in a province’s Wealth or Infrastructure.

I won’t go further indepth, as the implementation of this system is VERY, VERY early, and I’m not sure how much will change as it goes further into development, or even when that will properly take place. You will have plenty of the old pop system to enjoy, if you prefer that. It will still be optimized and taken care of until and if this system becomes polished enough to work, but accommodating both systems at the same time would sadly be impossible.
[/expand]

To end

Imperium Universalis is a truly huge mod, and there are many things I wish I could’ve gone over in this spotlight, that I didn’t have time or room for. Perhaps there will be another, or we will make Dev Diaries for them, or something similar. Of course, we always post frequent teasers on the IU Discord, and you can get the mod just about anywhere.

3.1.2 Steam Workshop (Main Page)

Development Build Steam Workshop

Paradox Mods Development Build

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=679204773

Jul 19, 2024

Community Mod Spotlight - The Rise and Fall of Empires

Europa Universalis IV - PDXRyagi

Hey all! Ryagi here, this time we're back to our roots with these Mod spotlights, giving a platform for those don't already have one. Today we're covering The Rise and Fall of Empires. A simple but effective mod made by Dante that aims to create a less blobby playstyle, for both players and the AI.

I'll let Dante explain what what his mod is all about, enjoy!

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Greetings, Emperors, Consuls, and Caliphs!

I’m Dante, and today, I’m thrilled to introduce you to The Rise and Fall of Empires. This overhaul shifts the focus from mindlessly blobbing to strategic empire management and stabilization. I hope that with this spotlight, I give you an insight into my creative process and a deep dive into the mod's features.

The mod includes a revamp of the effects of being over your governing capacity, while actually providing bonuses for remaining under the capacity in the form of administrative buffs, as displayed below.

This was the cornerstone of the mod that I built off for the rest of its development. To contribute to governing capacity challenges, I reduced the capacity that you get from technology and increased the governing capacity for provinces with separatism and unaccepted cultures. I then asked myself,

“What are some more ways to reduce the player and AI’s tendency to become unrealistically large?”

To start, I thought of separatism and Rebels. In vanilla, Dealing with rebels is essentially a game of whack-a-mole, and once you deal with one stack of rebels, the entire area is essentially pacified. To make this more challenging and involved, I aimed to make rebels more similar to Pretenders.

I started by enabling their ability to retreat and reinforce, meaning you need to exert more effort in dealing with them. Then, I enabled the ability for them to recruit new units upon occupying a province and had them give double the separatism.

The problem with this new feature is that you would end up with scenarios like this, where rebels would spiral into enormous hordes of revolting separatists.

A simple fix for this would be to only recruit new rebel units in provinces greater than 12 dev.

After tweaking this system, I started tweaking other values, like making civil wars more challenging, or adding buffs and nerfs to various terrain types. One of the most significant edits I made was to defensiveness. I increased the default defensiveness of all coastal provinces by 50% but added a feature where blockading a province would negative this defensiveness increase.

The goal is to make it so you need a more active naval presence to take on a fortified coastal fort, such as Venice. Obviously, coastal towns will be more resistant to sieges as they can simply ship in more food and supplies by sea.

In addition to coastal defensiveness tweaks, buffs have been applied to mountain and highland defensiveness, the former of which also has a buff to fort maintenance. This was done to make well-known mountain barriers more important in warfare, such as the Pyrenees, Carpathians, and the Caucasian mountains.

In the mod, I also entirely rework the spread of institutions. In addition to adding institution spread debuffs to Mountains, Deserts, and Steppes, I made every institution require the previous one to be embraced, and halved the institution growth from improving development. These are simple changes, but lead to a much more realistic technological situation and higher tech disparity between distinct and isolated geographic areas.

A screenshot from roughly 1625 illustrating the institution disparity

Another item changed in Rise and Fall is the effects of development.

Regarding development, I made quick changes to the per-development bonuses that you get from each type. Those bonuses are illustrated in the image below:

What this ends up doing is making large centers of development more powerful, and making it so specialization of development is more meaningful.

Lastly, I would like to go over one of the newest features of the mod, released in the 1.1 update. This is a disaster called National Decay, which I created to illustrate the collapse of extremely overextended nations. The goal was to create a situation similar to the Ming collapse but amped up the severity. The biggest difficulty was to balance this so it wouldn’t happen so often that it would ruin the player’s game, or happen to every AI, but often enough that it still presents an obstacle to blobbing and sprawl.

I won’t bother explaining all of the requirements to fire the disaster in detail, but generally, it happens mid-late game for nations with more than 500 development in unaccepted culture provinces outside the home region, as long as they are not overseas. The full disaster details are visible on the right.

The disaster gives a short period for the player to try and avoid it by increasing manpower level or releasing vassals and accepting cultures to avoid the requirements. Otherwise, the disaster is effectively unavoidable, as your civilization has gone past the point of no return. When the disaster fires, it will give the same debuffs as Low Mandate for China, in addition to an insane amount of national unrest.

Why is the unrest so high? Mainly to overcompensate for the -100% unrest from recent uprisings, as I had issues where the AI would always be able to kill all of the rebels.
An example of a before-after collapse can be seen below, with the Ottoman’s former extent traced in gold.

This is a collapse spurred on by the AI. The player might be able to avoid this through creative use of accepted cultures, exploit/concentrating development, or culture conversion.

This wraps up the overview of my thought process in creating my mod, The Rise and Fall of Empires. If you’re intrigued, don’t hesitate to check it out on the Steam Workshop.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3279567235

Happy ruling!

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Thank you Dante! This one was relatively Short and Sweet, but the gameplay implications of these anti blobbing mechanics are intriguing, so this mod is definitely something to try out if you not super into the sport of watching nation names get bigger and bigger.

As usual, if you have any suggestions for these spotlights, or maybe even want to throw your own hat into the ring we encourage you to reach out to us via Discord or here on the Forums. All are welcome whether you want to show off a classic EU4 mod, or are a tiny mod who hasn't even hit the steam workshop yet.

I wish you all a wonderful time creating, browsing and playing your favorite mods. We'll be returning with another spotlight in early August. Till next time!

Jun 28, 2024

Community Mod Spotlight - Ante Bellum - Blood and Iron

Europa Universalis IV - PDXRyagi

Good evening, good morning and good afternoon. Whatever timezone you're in, it's time for another Mod Spotlight! For this mod spotlight, we look to conclude our series showing off post 1.37 Major updates. With future mod spotlights going back to covering some of the more (hopefully) unknown diamonds in the rough. For now though, lets dive straight into a look at the upcoming Ante Bellum content, Blood and Iron. Presented by Lead Dev Parmelion.

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Hello everyone! My name is Parmelion and I am the lead developer of Ante Bellum. Today, I would like to present to you the upcoming ninth major update of the mod, titled ‘Blood and Iron’, which is releasing in less than two week - on July 8!

For those of you who are not familiar with the mod, Ante Bellum is a vanilla+ alternative history mod. The main design philosophy of the mod is to completely preserve the base game gameplay and add no new invasive mechanics to the game that would make the player feel like they must learn to interact with a new system in order to play optimally. In other words, if you know how to play the base game, you will instantly know how to play Ante Bellum! The mod’s main appeal is a completely new country setup caused by multiple historical points of divergence – Normans losing the Battle of Hastings, Arabs failing to conquer Persia, Mongols succeeding in invading Japan as well as five years’ worth of content, with hundreds of mission trees, government reforms, events, decisions, formable nations and so much more! If you are looking for a more general overview of the mod, I would recommend you checking out the first mod spotlight of Ante Bellum.

Now, let’s shift our attention to the main topic of today – the 1.9 ‘Blood and Iron’ update. In this update, we have decided to revisit one of the most popular regions in the world and give a proper facelift to the Holy Roman Empire. Although the HRE was a side focus of the 1.4 ‘Empire’s Downfall’ update, the update was released four years ago, and the content is visibly dated and no longer up to our current standards. Now, I would like to show you a short list of the update’s main features, and then I will speak about them in more detail:

Province and country update of the Holy Roman Empire
Nine new or updated imperial incidents
Hussite, Gaelic and Anglican HRE paths
Overhauled custom achievements screen window
Protestant & Reformed religious schools
Reformation changes & Counter-Reformation
Paladins special unit
German, Italian, Gallic and Byzantine pre-set colonial nations
24 new mission trees
New soundtrack, loading screen, bookmark, achievements, formable nations, events, decisions, estate privileges, government reforms, monuments, cultures, cosmetic renames, dynamic province names and so much more

The first thing you’ll likely see when booting up Blood and Iron for the first time is our new loading screen. This original piece of artwork depicts Robert de Hauteville, also known as the Mad Duke of Capua – one of the most popular characters in the entire mod with quite literally insane event chain dedicated to him. If you are looking for a challenging and flavorful first campaign in Ante Bellum, then I would highly recommend you check out Capua!

Many centuries have passed since the Ottonian dynasty's illustrious reign came crashing down. Trampled under boot by the resurgent Carolingians, Saxony was thoroughly harried, with furor far surpassing even Charlemagne's war against Widukind. All the while, the princes prostrated themselves before the French, offering oaths laced with sedition and tribute stained in blood. Since then, the Holy Roman Empire's integrity - and by extension that of the Roman Catholic Church - have been called into question; Trinacria's fall to the Saracen menace in the 14th Century came as a devastating blow to Italy's security, followed mere decades later by Bohemia's immolation in the Hussite War. Now, as if adding naphtha to a pyre, 1443's Humiliation of Valencia dangles precariously over Emperor Lothair's head like the Sword of Damocles. Whether the Emperor or the princes prevail, there is no doubt that the Empire's destiny shall be forged through blood and iron.

Next up, you’ll encounter our new country setup and bookmark whose description you can read above. As we were mostly fine with the country setup established by the 1.4 ‘Empire’s Downfall’ update, the map overhaul of 1.9 is much more modest compared to our previous major updates. Despite that, you will still have a lot of new countries to play as, including Ivrea, Ravenna or Chur. We were also pretty satisfied with the province density, so the map update was not as massive as it is otherwise common for our major updates, but still, we do have some new provinces, such as the Isle of Elba, and wastelands here and there.

The first major feature I would like to talk about are the new imperial incidents. They are a great tool which revitalizes the game in the HRE and gives all tags something to interact with. In Blood and Iron, we are adding nine new or reworked imperial incidents. Our new incidents include Lotharingia’s Imperial Entrance, the Wendish Threat or the Fate of Francia which fires once the Carolingians lose the imperial mantle. The new Emperor will be able to kick Francia out of the Empire, and if the princes vote for kicking the French, Francia will be able to contest this decision and declare the War for the Fate of Francia and the Empire against the Emperor. If victorious, Francia will reclaim the imperial mantle and force itself back into the HRE. Imperial princes will be choosing sides and joining either Francia or the new emperor, so this war will eventually turn into a mini league war.

Now, let's shift our focus to religion for a bit. In Blood and Iron, we have decided to better represent various Protestant denominations by giving the religious schools mechanic to Protestant and Reformed religions. The new religious schools will not only add new flavor and more depth to intrareligious interactions but will also provide the player with some additional bonuses. You will be able to embrace a wide variety of religious schools, including Lutheran, Waldensian, Calvinist, Puritan and more! Moreover, you might have noticed a Center of Reformation with the Catholic cross next to it on the screenshot. In Blood and Iron, Catholic countries which have embraced Counter-Reformation will be able to spawn Centers of Counter-Reformation to fight the heretics more effectively!

Those of you who are familiar with Ante Bellum know that we have our own achievement system. As of now, the system works primarily through decisions, but since the addition of moddable custom GUI, the system was converted to be supported by an interactable interface. We originally wanted to make it look exactly like Steam achievements, but decided to go for a more unique and authentic design. Achievements are also sorted by major updates, as indicated by the small patch in the bottom right corner. For our achievement hunters, Blood and Iron will be adding about 20 completely new achievements!

Pre-set colonial nations are one of the most unique and fan favourite features of Ante Bellum. Essentially, they are pre-made tags which your generated colonial nations turn into should you have the option enabled. This allows us to assign various unique features to them, such as custom country flags. In Blood and Iron, we will be adding new pre-set colonial nations to Germany, Italy, Gallia and Byzantium. Here’s a preview of their new custom flags:

Now, to the fan favourite part of all updates - mission trees! When it comes to missions, Blood and Iron will be the largest update Ante Bellum has ever received. With new mission trees for over 20 tags, and some trees exceeding 70 missions, the player will have a lot of great content to go through. Since most of these trees are regional, almost every single nation in the HRE – anything ranging from Carniola, Frankfurt, Holstein, Ravenna to Lombardy – will receive a unique mission tree.

Here's a look at some of them:

Francia
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Hansa
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Aquitaine
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Bohemia
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Germany
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Genoa/Italy
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Besides that, there is a lot of other content coming, including new formable nations such as Aquitaine, Helvetia or Rhineland.

New great projects such as the Colosseum, the Leaning Tower of Pisa or the Palace of Arles.

New government mechanics including Helvetic Militarization and Hanseatic Commercialism.

New menu indicators for nations which have received a mini-update or have access to pre-set colonial nations.

New special units

Blood & Iron also comes with a completely originally new soundtrack by the prolific composer, Utopia. You can listen to that here:

And that’s far from over. There are hundreds of new events, decisions, government reforms, estate privileges, dynamic province names, cultures, lore startup screens and much much more.
Blood and Iron is the result of more than a year of hard work, and we are excited to finally release it to the public on July 8. All of our supporters, however, can play the update in early access right now. If supporting the mod’s development is within your means, definitely consider it, as you will unlock yourself about 15 amazing rewards, including early access to all future updates or the ability to request content additions to the mod.
If you would instead prefer to watch the new content in action, several content creators have already covered it, and you can watch the playthrough of multiple 1.9 nations in their videos:

I would also like to invite you to join our community Discord server which has over 11000 members and allows you to talk to other mod fans, share your campaigns, participate in multiplayer games or community events. You can find all relevant links in the Steam description of the mod.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1908400374

Thank you for taking the time to read this mod spotlight. See you in Ante Bellum!

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Back to John Paradox speaking, Thank you all for joining us! Be sure to check out Ante Bellum on July 8th, especially if you haven't already tried this breathtaking mod.
If you're reading this as it comes out, we also invite you to check out our selection of Paradox titles currently on sale now in the Steam Summer sale. Including Eu4 and select DLCs for up to 70% off.

As we mentioned at the start, we hope to bring these spotlights back to their roots and show of some of the lesser known mods in the coming weeks/months. We'll see you then!

Jun 13, 2024

1.37.2 Patch is now LIVE!

Europa Universalis IV - PDXRyagi

Hello everyone - today we have released 1.37.2, this patch brings 130+ fixes in total.

As usual, please report any issues in our bug report forum or submit a support ticket; this is the fastest way for us to see and address any problems.

Keep in mind while these changes shouldn't affect 1.37.0/1.37.1 save games too profoundly, this is something we're not able to fully guarantee, especially if using mods. See here for information on how to roll back or prevent auto updates.

Patch 1.37.2 Changelog:

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# Interface
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# Tooltips
- Added a missing unlocalized string for when the player enacts the Institutionalized Black Army government reform.
- Added a missing localized tooltip for unlocking State Madrasas and Karimi Stations' government reforms for the Mamluks and Egypt.
- New modifiers icons for cawa_cost_modfier, hussasrs_cost_modifier, territories_governing_cost.
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# Script
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# Achievements
- The achievement "Back to the Piast" now mentions Glogow and Opole instead of Silesia.
- The achievement "Kushite Restoration" now mentions that you or your subjects can own Egypt and that they don't have to be core provinces.
- The achievement "Land of Eastern Jade" now properly mentions the Mexico region instead of just Central America.
- The "Truly Divine Ruler" achievement now mentions that the ruler can be higher than just a 5/5/5 to count.
- The achievement "One Night in Paris" now mentions that the Angevin Kingdom is allowed for the achievement.
- The achievement "There Khan only be one!" is no longer blocked by native countries reforming into hordes.

# Decisions
- Added a check for LotN when completing relevant missions upon forming Poland.
- The decision from "[Root.GetBurghersName] Financial Demand" will now show up even if you don't have any ports. However, you still need at least one port to enact it.
- The "Re-form the Golden Horde" decision is no longer blocked from having a subject holding the necessary provinces.

# Events
- The "Praxis Pietatis Melica" event can now trigger for Prussia too.
- The event "Disagreement over Company Purchases" can no longer give you a claim over a province you own yourself already.
- The event "Tribute from <From country>" will now show how much money you gain.
- The event "The <Dynasty>" can no longer fire for junior partners.
- The event "Complaints about [Root.GetLowLevelOfficialForCountry]" will now have a 4 monthly income cost for Republics if they execute the official.
- The event "Hostility to New Production Techniques" now has a goto button.
- The event "Cabinet of Curiosities" now has a goto button.
- Switched the modifier names from the "National Bank" event.
- The Burgundian Inheritance is no longer locked into picking monarchies as the potential senior partner for Burgundy. In other words: if you happen to be a Signora with a lot of land and you marry Burgundy then you become eligible for the Succession, though you have only a 10th chance as a normal monarchy would have.
- The event "Emergent Culture in the Colonies" can now appear for Anglois countries too.
- The event "The Shadow Kingdom" now mentions that you lose 0.2 IA per development per Italian province which leaves the HRE if you do not have Emperor active.
- Updated the tooltip in "Strengthening Our Merchants" for the privilege in the event option so it no longer lies to the player.
- The event “Kreditwerk” will no longer fire multiple times.
- The event “Our Cause is Just” now fires for the Espionage ideas, not the Influence ideas.
- Fixed scoping issues within the event "The Fate of France". In other words, you get mana points, and France gets to destroy its monuments.
- The event republic_factions.101 no longer fires for republics with lottery elections.
- The “Crown of Rome”'s second option to release the Latin Empire will only appear if Thrace is directly owned by the player.
- The event "Intercolonial Disputes" no longer fires for Sunset Colonies.
- The event "Campaign into Thessaly" will now properly disable the "Rise of a Pretender" event.
- The event "Vengeance for Manzikert" now has a proper picture.
- The event "Election of a New Ruler" can no longer fire for Integrated PU subjects.
- The event "Disaster in Franconia" can no longer fire for Brandenburg if the player does not own the Domination DLC.
- "The Italian Military" now properly disables the "Cruelty of Mercenaries" event.

# Missions
- For Hungary's "Recover Dalmatia" mission, ships are now only granted if there's no naval construction ongoing. If there is, the player will earn an alternate reward.
- Updated the effect tooltip of the Dutch mission "Trade in the Ivory Coast".
- The Dutch mission "Ending the Sound Toll" now properly fires its event.
- The Dutch mission "University of Leiden" now highlights Den Haag.
- The Dutch mission "Fate of the Confederation" now properly applies its reward on all Land Right privileges.
- The Dutch mission "Lands of the Generality" no longer checks parliament size if you don't have one.
- The Dutch mission "Relations in Britain" no longer requires you to have a spy network in them if England/GB becomes a subject.
- The Dutch mission "Lands of the Generality" now properly applies its rewards even if you pick the "Superiority of the State" gov reform.
- The Austrian mission "Royal Hungary" will no longer instantly kill Ladislaus if he is still an heir.
- The Austrian mission "Defeat the French" now properly splits France even if they are in a PU with you.
- The Austrian mission "Emperors of the East" now only gives IA when you are the Emperor.
- The Hisn Kayfa mission "Fate of Anatolia" now grants its rewards properly when completed.
- The Oman mission "Fall of Baghdad" now properly requires the areas that are highlighted by the mission.
- Updated tooltips of Trebizond's missions to emphasize that provinces with their PORT in the Black Sea are counted.
- Fixed the Timurid's mission tree branch name display.
- The Timurid mission "Ambition in Yuan" now gives proper cores for all the subjects released in the event.
- The Mughal mission "Din-i Ilahi" does now properly prevent the Sinner personality from appearing.
- The Inca mission "Rule of the Sun" now has a fallback in case the player has already unlocked all reforms before forming the Inca.
- The Venice mission wof_ven_destroy_austria now accounts for Austria-Hungary.
- Fixed the “Lost Legions” from the Italian mission "Return His Legions" so that they no longer cost the Army Professionalism.
- The Theodoro mission "Aegean Supremacy" now properly checks that you own Nasso.
- The Theodorian mission "A Russian Aristocracy" no longer mentions "saving a country as russian_ally".
- The mission "Tumu Crisis" has now its requirements in an OR section if you are not Oirat.
- The mission "Tumu Crisis" now properly highlights Beijing.
- The Tatar's mission "Bowed Heads; Bent Knees" now always gives rewards no matter the way you complete it.
- The mission yua_printing_press now correctly grants progress for the institution when that spawns.
- Khiva now has access to the Moghulistan missions.
- Ferghana now has access to the Moghulistan missions.
- Khalkha now has Mongol missions.
- Khoshuud now has access to all the Mongol missions.
- Kalmyk now has access to all the Tatar missions.
- Reforming the Golden Horde now gives the Horde missions properly.
- Completing the Persian mission "Expand Our Influence" will now properly show the new cap for the reduction of Persian Influence cost in the government abilities.
- The Georgian mission "Patriarchate of All Georgia" now grants proper rewards even if you don't have Third Rome active.
- The “Apostolic Church” idea is now gaining its upgrade from the Armenian mission tree properly.
- The DLC-locked rewards of the Armenian mission "Proclaim Great Armenia" are no longer mentioned if the needed DLCs are inactive.
- The Byzantine mission "Return to Gold" now takes into account whether Trebizond has gold as its raw good.
- The Ming mission "Survey the Ocean Shores" will now mention that the power projection is permanent.
- The Reform Civil Registration mission of the EoC now correctly grants its alternative reward if the Rights of Man DLC is not active.

# Modifiers
- Removed duplicate instances of the ITA_extra_goods_produced_for_colonies modifier.
- The modifier hsn_a_sublime_alliance from the "A Sublime Alliance" mission no longer disappears after breaking an alliance.
- The “Marine Exercises” modifier reward for Venice is now properly permanent.

# Setup
- Orochoni is now eligible to use the mercenary company "Mongol Banner".
- The Aztecs no longer start with the Triple Alliance privilege if you do not have Winds of Change.

# Other
- The privilege "Outwards Perfection" now reduces max absolutism.
- “Scuola Grande” local organizations are now available after you change your tag as Venice.
- Hindu rebels now properly give influence to the Brahmins when they enforce their demands.
- Forming Silesia will no longer mention that you obtain any new missions as there are no missions for Silesia.
- The Burghers Agenda "Discover <Area>" will no longer be given if you don't have any permanent source for new explorers/conquistadors.
- The Hungarian/German Revolution can now fire even if Hungary/Austria is a subject nation. However, once Austria-Hungary is formed, the subjected nation automatically joins AH and the former overlord can fight a DEFENSIVE war against AH.
- The "Strengthen the Dhimmi" government reform will ensure the Dhimmi estate's existence and prevent the Brahmins from appearing.
- Incorporated Vassals / PU now count for Strong Duchies and Integration Policy privileges.
- Fixed the alert text for recruiting foreign generals.
- Added missing localization explaining that you cannot DoW your own Mongol Brother Realm. There won't be family conflicts under the Mongol roof.
- Updated the "has center of trade" trigger so it no longer implies that a province can have more than CoTs with different levels.
- Added a missing localization which explains to you that you cannot declare wars on your own Commercial Enterprise subjects.
- Fixed an issue with the Porcelain Agenda perpetually increasing its requirements.
- The estate privilege "High Altitude Adaptation" now applies its maluses on provinces you gain after having the privilege enacted already.
- The Rajput Military Leadership reform is no longer available if you don't have Dharma active.
- Sunset Colonies now count towards the "Create a Colonial Empire" Age Objective.
- The government mechanic button "Strengthen Overseas Outposts" now has a 10-year cooldown.
- The Stadhouder Monarchy reform is now removed when you become a PU subject.
- It is no longer possible to replace governors of Sunset Colonies.
- It is now possible to seize territories from Sunset Colonies.
- Forming Austria-Hungary will now give dip points if there is no slot free for Hungarian / Austrian to accept.
- The "Arabian Plutocracy" gov reform now unlocks the Plutocratic Idea Group.
- Forming Egypt as Hisn Kayfa will now properly fire the "New Traditions and Ambitions" event.
- The Potosi mine will correctly check the conditional reward of the Chinese Emperor's single whip law.
- The "Empower Religious Propagation" government mechanic is now properly applied.
- Fixed minor typo for Russian Mercenary Guard gov reform.
- The VOC will now automatically adopt the technology group of its overlord.
- removed the "has_unlocked_government_reform_tooltip" scripted trigger, the base has_unlcoked_government_reform trigger now supports the custom tooltip baseline.
- The Dutch Republic government reforms now count for events that are supposed to trigger for countries capable of forming Personal Unions (in other words: missions/events that grant PU CBS are now eligible for the Netherlands too).
- Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Wagenburg Tactics government reform.
- Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Bohemian Elective Monarchy government reform.
- Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Imperial Hungarian Monarchy government reform.
- Fixed unlocalized string when enacting the Crusader Nobility reform.
- Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting any of the Germany specific government reforms.
- Fixed an unlocalized string when enacting the Bergordnung Reform.

###################
3D
###################
- Theodoro retains its unit sprites after switching cultures from Gothic (Byzantine) to Gothic (Germanic).
- Weapon for Umbrian Tier 1 infantry/artillery is held with both hands
- Mercenary Company "Gascon Musket Company "based in Armagnac (175 ) uses Southern French unit sprites instead of the French sprites
- Uzbek unit models from the Great Horde Unit Pack are useful for all the Altaic cultures instead of being replaced by Timurid units from the Great Horde Unit Pack.
- After completing geo_throne_of_the_romans, Georga start using the Byzantine sprite
- Yi and Miao use now the Dali Unit Sprites.

###################
# Bugfixes
###################
- Fixed an issue with Eunuch rebels not spawning.
- Fixed an issue with duplicate effect after centralizing a state while having the French Absolutist Monarchy.
- Fixed an issue with the has_any_ongoing_construction trigger.
- Fixed AI taking defender of faith regardless of the scripted Ai weights.
[/expand]

Previous changelogs
1.37 'Inca'

May 24, 2024

Community Mod Spotlight - Post Finem

Europa Universalis IV - PDXRyagi

Hey all! Ryagi back to give you another Mod Spotlight, this time we're taking a short dive into the alternate history world of Post Finem. Lead dev, Chewy does a great job introducing you straight into that world, so I'll let him take it away!

_________________________________________

Hello everyone! My name is Chewy and I am the lead developer for Post Finem (and I’m also the guy who watches the AI ruin itself on YouTube).

For those who don’t know what Post Finem is, it is an alternate history overhaul mod for Europa Universalis IV that aims to answer the question: What if it was CARTHAGE that was victorious in the Punic Wars, and Rome was dismantled upon their completion?
Of course everyone has their ideas of how alternate history should unfold and what is “realistic” and “unrealistic,” and at the end of the day, the beauty of fiction is that reality is often even stranger!

The lore dump is available on the wiki (still WIP, but will answer a lot of questions): https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Post_Finem/Lore_Dump

Taking a look at the map you will see that Europe, northern Africa, as well as eastern Asia are very different, and that is for good reason! You will also notice some very sweeping changes in Arabia, the Horn of Africa, and into southern India, but that is yet unreleased content that we will explain toward the end of this showcase. So, stick around, because it’s content we’re VERY excited to release!

The political map of Post Finem in 1444, with Carthage a shell of its former glory.

Without the rise of the Romans, there is a very large cascading effect on history. Without Rome, Christianity fails to take off and encompass much of the Western world. The Hellenic pantheon remains dominant in the east, while the Punic pantheon becomes the de facto faith in the west, even pushing into the Italian peninsula via trade relations and political pressures. The Carthaginian Empire continues to grow, incorporating all of Mauretania, Iberia, and southern Gaul into the fold. This is fairly evident when you look at the religious map of the mod.

The religious mapmode in 1444, with a diverse array of faiths throughout the entire scope region. Keep an eye on the Romana in northern Italia, as well as the Evangelos and Jewish provinces in northern Arabia.

For the sake of brevity, we will explain that the so-called “barbarians” of Gaul, Germania, Slavia, and Scandinavia were mostly unaffected by the Punic and Hellenic worlds, as external forces were often viewed as “untouchable” and thus there was ever interest in pursuing conquest in the lands to their north. That allowed these faiths, although evolving internally over the centuries, to remain relevant in their homelands.
These nations have a diverse cast of players, with multiple formable nations and dozens of unique mission trees scattered throughout the regions.

A few notable examples are:
Saxony, whose mission tree pushes them to unite Germania, proclaiming the Konigreich of Germania, and beyond.
The Ostgermanic nations of Ostholm and Vildheim, pushing to unite Ostgermania as Donova, and eventually mend the schism that exists between the Germanic and Ostgermanic peoples.
Kashubia, the de facto leader of the Slavic world, uniting Severoslavia, and eventually incorporating the Jugoslavians to form Slavia, with unique additions to the mission tree along the way.

Though the Gaelic peoples of Gaul and the Celtic Isles have embraced the feudal government system, the vast woods and highlands of northern Europe remain primarily in a tribal structure, with the Feudalism institution yet to be present.

And while on the topic of government structure, the Zoroastrian Empire of Persia must be brought up, having recently (within the last 300 years) pushed the Selecuid Greeks from the Persian heartland and established a regional governance system known as the Satrapies.

The Satrapy system demands specific conquests and freedoms granted to the special subjects in exchange for more efficient governance of the borderlands of the Persian Empire. This lends itself to a VERY unique gameplay experience for anyone looking to utilize a vassal swarm game.

There are currently over 60 unique mission trees in the mod, and I can’t show off all of them, but I will happily show off a few of my personal favorites that I feel showcase the talent of the contributors and developers that work(ed) on the mod since it started last August.

Carthage, the shadow of the once great Carthaginian Empire, exists in its heartland, governing a few loosely incorporated vassal nations in the region. The Qahal, the parliamentary system utilized by Carthage, rules the nation and dictates a lot of the internal politics of Carthage.

Their mission tree will push them to reconquer their lost territory and beyond, all the while industrializing their nation and reclaiming the glory of their once great name.

Macedonia is another formerly great nation, experiencing civil war after civil war for the past few centuries, with small breaks here and there to lose territory to outside forces. In 1444 they are ruled by a weak king of the Philoxenos dynasty, with the military War Cabinet dictating military organization and operations

Starting in a precarious circumstance, Macedonia must be careful not to get involved in costly wars early as their low Organization will lead to low military quality. If Organization were to hit 0, the War Cabinet may just coup the Basileus!

The Macedonian mission tree, as you would expect, pushes them to reconquer the lost lands of the once-great empire of Alexander, complete with flavorful events, and the opportunity to rule southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and Aegyptos as personal unions.

Though the Hellenic world is ripe for reform, as the Hellenic pantheon has centralized dramatically over the past thousand years, with the Archonic Hierophantate of Athens dictating the beliefs and doctrines of the Hellenic faithful. Not everyone, however, is happy with that, and a certain conservationist movement known as the “Paradosi” have been making moves, primarily in the eastern portions of the Hellenic world. This is not even to mention the Kemetic synergist movement happening within Aegyptos, which is due to reach a boiling point within a few decades of the game start..

Over in Italia sits the land of the Italian Federation, an institution which was initially formed to act as a defensive alliance network to deter direct Carthaginian incursions into the Italian peninsula from their bases on Sardinia and Sicily. Over the centuries the Federation has reformed its contractual obligations, centralizing around a “Grand Adirim,” a lifetime appointed ruler to oversee the large scale operations of the federation. There is a lot of internal strife between the Punic majorities of Italia and Illyria, and the latin Romana minorities of the northern Portions, primarily in the Kingdom of Italia.

The new interface for the Italian Federation coming to Post Finem in the 1.2 update, complete with 24 possible reforms and the “Religious Tension” mechanic that acts as an engine to drive the Religious Leagues toward their inevitable conclusions. More on REDACTED at a later date. Of course, centralization will allow the Adirim to unite the Federation under the Roman banner, reclaiming that long-dead name.

There is a lot of content to enjoy within the Federation. The Federal Seat of Roma, looking to unite the Federation under one banner, ruling with their special subjects, the Principates. The electorate of Sardinia, ruling the waves and challenging the piratical menace that plagues the Mediterranean.
But perhaps one of the most impactful and engaging nations within the Federation would be Italia, the Romana minority leaders.

Italia is poised to challenge the Punics, especially following their persecution at the hands of the Scarlet Delegation, instituted by the Adirim in the year prior to game start.

But for those looking for a power fantasy, look not further than the rump state of the Seleucid Kingdom. Despite falling very far from the powerful position they once occupied, the Seleucids are very much not to be counted out.

The Seleucid mission tree pushes for massive conquests, uniting the Hellenic world, all the while buffing their already powerful military, becoming the undisputed militaristic hegemon of the world. The branching missions open up upon the initialization of the Paradosi reformation of the Hellenic pantheon, allowing Seleucia to reform and lead the reformation, or reject it and defend the Archon’s Diktat!

And those are just to name a few of the many beautifully crafted mission trees in the mod.
On top of mission content, there are HUNDREDS of flavor events, including an entire rework of the colonial game and the new world, unique national ideas for almost every single new nation on the map, large generic mission trees that are shared across regions, such as the non-Saxon Germanic nations, and much, much more.

We have also adopted the “Ante Bellum” system of updates for Post Finem, focusing heavily on specific regions of the map and going all-in on injecting them with as much engaging flavor and content as possible.

The 1.1 update, the “New Horizons” update pushed large changes to Iberia, including 3 new formable nations (Boraliber, Gadrium, and Kusi-Iber), each complete with unique mission trees, as well as a rework to the map of Mauretania, introducing new tags, a regional mission tree, and Mauretania formable, complete with a unique and powerful mission tree, as well as a rework of the entire new world, trade nodes, colonial nations, and post-colonial formable nations, all complete with shared or unique mission trees and national ideas. It was huge!

Currently the 1.2 update, the “Sons of Abraham” update is DEEP in development, and we are announcing today that it will be released on Friday, the 21st of June!
This update overhauls Arabia, the Horn of Africa, and southern India, introducing 3 new Christian religions (Evangelos, the Levantine Christians, Sevasam, the Indian Christians, and Concetus, the Italian Christians), the Jain religion, and a rework to the Arabic religion. All religions included in the 1.2 update are receiving mechanics, with Evangelos and Jain receiving entirely custom mechanics, created from scratch!

The Evangelos faith is focused around spreading the faith, either by diplomacy or by the sword, and will lead to powerful buffs along the way, ultimately pushing for the unification of the Evangelos world into a united tag, the Theodokos.

The Jain faith focuses on enlightenment, and each of the 3 colored hands can be clicked to reveal various “paths” that enlightenment can be spent on, granting various bonuses that stack nicely.

There will be dedicated mission content for many nations, with many more sharing regional mission trees that expand upon forming various nations such as Arabia, Dilmun (Gulf of Persia), Munifara (Horn of Africa), Sumukiun (Southern India), and many more!

The top portion of this tree is available in 1444 to Heliopolis, the leader of the Sacred Empire of Christ, with the bottom portion being unlocked upon unification of the Theodokos via the Christian Zeal mechanic shown previously.

The Munifara mission tree, with the shared portion being built upon by the yellow portion (East African vs Semetic tech groups vs coastal Somalian nations) and the red portion upon uniting the Horn and forming Munifara.

The Indo-Greek nation of Simylla, a one province minor in western India, has the ability for grow far beyond their 1444 borders and unite India as Yavana, unlocking this BEEFY mission tree to aid them in their conquests.

And the last mission tree to show for 1.2 will be Zulfaar, the theocratic center of the Islamic world, based in Yemen. The holy city of Taiz, the spiritual center of Islam, where the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) established the faith.
Their theme will be to unite Arabia and the Horn, pushing beyond, and developing the home lands, creating a beautiful homeland for the Islamic peoples.

All of that to show that we are VERY excited for what is to come in the near future for Post Finem.

If you are interested in participating in an open beta for 1.2, we will be opening the Discord server up to it on June 7th, so hop in and expect a ping before too long!
Additionally, Patrons to Post Finem get early access to the development alpha builds, so check that out in the Discord as well if that sounds appealing to you and you want to support development.
https://discord.gg/postfinem

Thank you all for taking the time to read about my little mod! I hope you enjoy playing Post Finem as much as I have enjoyed working on it over the past ~10 months!

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We hope you enjoyed this Mod Spotlight. Even you Rome lovers (The Glory of Rome would surely never fail us as depicted here). If any of this sounds interesting to you, check out Post Finem over on steam workshop.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3142739241

If you're interested in some of Chewy's other work, you can find our mod spotlight on his other overhaul mod, Land of the Free, and his YouTube over at both Chewyshoot and Chewbert

We'll see you next time!