Europa Universalis IV News

Good morning, everyone! This week we’re going back to Southeast Asia to talk about some extra content that we’re making for some of the tags.

Starting with the Philippines, we have decided to focus on two specific tags instead of giving them all some generic missions. First, we have Tondo. Tondo is located in the island of Luzon, in the northern part of the archipelago. Philippine political organization consisted of a type of “city-states” called barangays, which formed groups of families ruled by a datu. Bigger barangays, as Tondo in this case, would integrate several smaller barangays governed by a paramount datu, whose title would vary in each region (lakan in the case of Tondo). This grand barangay was an important center of trade in all Nusantara, since the presence of Chinese migration resulted in Tondo becoming the main center of Chinese goods, trading all across Southeast Asia.

Some highlights from this mission tree include:

• Growing Strong will reward the existence of level 2 forts in provinces Tondo, Laguna and Mindoro with +25% Defensiveness in each of them.
  
• The Queen’s Channel is a reference to the channel that serves as a natural frontier with Manila, in the Pasig River delta. It was not only an important source of water for said barangay, but also its main opportunity of trading. Gaining control over it will give Tondo a huge +50 Trade Power in the Philippines trade node.
  
• Both Befriend Majapahit and Abandon the Dragon refer to the importance of democratic relations in Tondo’s polity. The Majapahit Empire was a powerful ally of the Tondo people, so regaining their trust will result in some extra Diplomatic Power and +1 Diplomatic Reputation. At the start of the game, Tondo is a tributary of the Ming dynasty, so dissolving this union will grant Tondo Legitimacy, Administrative Power and some claims in the coast of China.
  

Next up, we have Madyas. After the Chola invasion of Srivijaya in the beginning of the 11th century, a group of dissident datus from Borneo and Sumatra fled their land and sought refuge in the Visayas islands, where they encountered the native population and, according to the legend, made a trade treaty with the Ati hero Marikudo and his wife, rightfully purchasing the land in Panay. Madyas thus became another grand barangay in the archipelago, with a special focus on maritime trade and warfare.

Some highlights from this mission tree include:

• All the Ships of Aklan is a reference to the province of Aklan, seat of the first capital of the polity and center of the Confederation mentioned in the Book of Maragtas that we’ll address later. Because of the naval importance we have mentioned before, having an admiral, more than 8 galleys and building to the 90% of the naval Force Limit will be rewarded with a +5% Morale of Navies, -5% Heavy Ship Cost and -10% Light Ship Cost as our first mission.
  
• Going Back Home implies the preparation for the return to their original land. Permanent claims on Borneo will be granted after making a show of force by owning at least 10 provinces in the Philippines.
  
• The Book of Maragtas is the legendary book that gives an account of the history of the Madyas people and their arrival from Borneo. Owning the northern part of the island will result in 100 Diplomatic Power, 100 Administrative Power, 100 Military Power and +1 Stability.
  

In addition to these two mission trees, we have prepared 6 unique missions shared by both Tondo and Madyas in slot 2, regarding the conquest of all the archipelago. These missions will require the player to conquer the inhabited land of each of the three main regions: Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, thus granting some morale bonuses and the possibility of immediately conquering unoccupied land in each of these areas, as long as there are two regiments present in each province.

Moving on, we have Palembang, one of the pirate nations that can be formed very early on in the game, so we wanted to reflect a bit of the pirate’s life in our missions too! But historically, Palembang was also one of the oldest cities in all Nusantara, once the capital of the powerful Srivijaya empire and main controller of all the maritime trade routes in Southeast Asia. A balance between this major historical moment and the more “modern” piracy was therefore necessary, all of it leading to the restoration of this ancient and powerful realm.

Some highlights from this mission tree include:

• Where the Water Leaks is a reference to one possible etymological explanation for the name of this tag, always associated with water. This mission will require the player to build to 100% Naval Force Limit and will grant permanent claims on the Siak and Jambi controlled provinces, thus starting the recovery of their lost land.
  
• Orang Laut, Arrival of the Dragonships and Pirate Kings all have the same objective of gaining the best possible allies to continue with the expansion plan. Having the state privilege Orang Laut Privileges and some owned provinces in the northern part will boost your Navy Tradition; dragonships were powerful ships of Chinese origin that will reward your conquests and maximum Navy Force Limit with a Ship Cost reduction and another boost to your Ship Combat Ability (all of them for both light and heavy ships); and having 2 powerful admirals and 4 more provinces in the East will allow access to the admiral Chen (3/3/4/3), a legendary Chinese pirate that ruled over Palembang.
  
• Both King Under the Mountain and King’s Court in the second slot focus on the ancient splendor of the Srivijaya Empire, whose Shailendra dynasty came from the neighboring island of Java. Owning some provinces in said location will reduce National Unrest and add a general with 50 Tradition, as well as granting the final cores that will lead to our culminating mission.
  
• Restore Srivijaya will require the player to own all of the Sumatra and Java islands, former possessions of the thalassocracy. With the recovered glory of the Empire, Palembang will be rewarded with a permanent Stability Cost Modifier of -10%, +1 Stability and more Diplomatic, Administrative and Military Power.
  

That’s all for today! Thank you for reading and have a nice week :)

Click here to discuss on the Forums

Hey everyone,

Pontus here, marketing lead on EU4. Sorry to inform you all that today’s "DD" has been delayed due to sick leave on the EUIV team, and we should be back to more normal next week.

Today we are here to talk a little bit about Grandest LAN. This year posed some additional challenges due to Covid. Obviously we couldn't bring dozens of people together in one place for days on end. Thankfully our partners at Parsec made this year's LAN party possible. Many of you have asked “How is this a LAN”? Simple! All the computers were here in Stockholm, in one great LAN (with minimal latency), and all the players used Parsec, which is a remote desktop app, to control the computers from the comfort of their homes. And it went off without a hitch! Thankfully. Thousands of you watched the events unfold live, and hundreds of thousands have already caught up by watching the VODs on Twitch.

We just want to give a warm and hearty thank you to everyone. TurboLARP for setting up the event, Parsec for making it possible. The players for taking time out of their lives to Role Play with us. Everyone on the back end making sure the game ran smoothly. The GMs, the casters, the devs, and you, the viewers, we do it all for you!

For those of you who missed the Grandest LAN live, the entire event is being uploaded to YouTube in easy to digest, 30ish minute episodes. We will compile the entire event into a playlist for ease of viewing as a series. We know it can be difficult to watch if simply presented, unedited, in two giant 12 hour chunks.

And one more thing we need to discuss... which team was your favorite to watch???
Was it the tag swapping Swiss?
The Dutch, whose cash made the world go round?
The brave Georgians, who fought off so many assaults on their mountain forts.
The Irish, Bretons, or Norwegians, who all fought for control over the New World...so the dutch could plunder the trade routes :D
The Serbs, who started more than a few global conflicts.
The Mighty Prussians! Who were always happy to upset the balance of someone else’s war.
Let us know who was the MVP...in your heart.

The first episode can be watched here: [previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

And the entire playlist is here: Playlist

Next week we will be back with a proper game related Dev Diary, with some very interesting and hotly requested new content that will be coming soon...

Click here to read on the Forums

Welcome back to a new Dev Diary! I am Aldaron and I am the other new Content Designer in Paradox Tinto. Happy to be here with all of you, adding a bit more information to that which my colleague @skingrado shared last Tuesday.

During the last Dev Diary there were two questions that were repeated a few times and that hopefully I will be able to answer today:

What about Western America?
Well, we cannot just add everything we have done to a single dev diary, but do not worry, because today we’ll show you a bit more, this time devoted to this area of North America that you people asked for.

Will there be any work on the rest of America?
The focus of this expansion is not the rest of America, but as a matter of fact, we added a mission for those nations with the Religious Reforms feature.

So without much preambles, and before we start, I would like to remind everyone a last tiny thing. As my colleague said last Tuesday, we have divided North American Natives into 6 of the 9 cultural areas that are normally used in anthropology when studying these people. Dividing them in cultural areas has given us the opportunity to group several TAGs into a common core and at the same time add diversity to the area.

MISSIONS:

As you might know, one of the less fun things when playing natives was the mission tree. You had the general mission tree, but you could not fill it due to the limitation natives have! Well, no more. As part of the work on natives, we have created a new general mission tree adapted to Natives, with some interrelationships between several of the missions and the addition of some new ones to make them more engaging. This mission tree is available to every native nation, from the Northwestern Pass to Tierra del Fuego.
(Notice that all icons are still placeholders).​

Besides, as you can see in the previous image, we have added a small mission (Reform our Religion) for the three more advanced native groups (Aztec, Inca and Maya) to deal with their mechanics, despite them not being the focus of the expansion.

Continuing with last week’s trend, here we have the specific regional mission tree for those natives whose living developed in the Great Plains of North America. This group includes the several Sioux tribes (such as Lakota or Dakota [Sioux ingame]), the Shoshone or the Wichita. This group’s focus revolves around hunting bison and would evolve to a horse riding culture after contact with the Europeans. Without any doubt the most iconic Native American group of people.

Some highlights of this tree include:

• Gathering all that available food from the wild that will improve your economic power.
  
• Befriending those around you will help you with your federations.
  
• Capturing those horses from the Europeans will greatly improve your capacity to combat over them.
  

If Plain Natives were a rather peaceful people before contact, Northwestern ones were pretty much the contrary. Raidings were a constant in the life of these people and would bring their canoes to capture slaves as south as California. But war and slavery were not the only thing Northwestern natives would focus on, they had a complex social culture that involved showing wealth of to their own people or to foreigners as a way to celebrate their power (the Potlach Ceremony) or showing respect to ancestors or shaming enemies with their elaborate totems.

Some highlights of this tree include:

• Remembering the ancestors and their deeds to unite your people under your rule.
  
• Boasting about your wealth to bring your allies closer to you.
  
• Showing your strength and using that fear against your enemies.
  

NATIONAL IDEAS:

Pretty much as with Mission Trees, we have divided National Ideas into Regional National Ideas that will fire for TAGs belonging to certain regions.

In this DD I will present two of the six regional sets.

Since California was forgotten in the previous section, I will start with them.

California is the smallest cultural region in North America but with a very pronounced personality. Despite being mostly sedentary people, living in a very rich region, Californian Natives did not rely much on agriculture and despite their population density (it is estimated it was the biggest in NA) they were not very warfaring. Their NIs relate to their own development and diplomatic expansion.

california_native_ideas = {
start = {
autonomy_change_time = -0.25
same_culture_advisor_cost = -0.5
}

bonus = {
years_of_nationalism = -5
}

trigger = {
primary_culture = yokuts
}
free = yes

division_as_a_strength_cf = {
num_accepted_cultures = 1
promote_culture_cost = -0.25
}
basketweaving = {
production_efficiency = 0.05
}
tribelets = {
diplomatic_upkeep = 1
stability_cost_modifier = -0.10
}
forest_gardening = {
development_cost = -0.10
}
kuksu_cult = {
religious_unity = 0.5
}
rock_art = {
prestige_decay = -0.01
global_unrest = -2
}
medicine_men = {
land_attrition = -0.10
}
}

Back to the Northwest, these people had a different angle on how they saw life and their NIs are more devoted to warfare and expansion.

nw_native_ideas = {
start = {
development_cost = -0.10
heir_chance = 0.5
}

bonus = {
army_tradition_decay = -0.01
}

trigger = {
OR = {
primary_culture = athabascan
primary_culture = chinook
primary_culture = haida
primary_culture = salish
}
}
free = yes

raid_warfare_nw = {
infantry_shock = 0.5
rival_change_cost = -0.2
}
brother_salmon = {
tolerance_own = 1
}
potlatch = {
improve_relation_modifier = 0.2
global_unrest = -2
}
mother_and_father = {
female_advisor_chance = 0.1
}
totem_poles_nw = {
prestige_decay = -0.01
stability_cost_modifier = -0.1
}
canoe_people = {
leader_land_manuever = 1
}
division_as_a_strength_nw = {
num_accepted_cultures = 1
promote_culture_cost = -0.25
}
}

EVENTS:

Different regions will have access to different events, and some common ones. This week we will show a few of these regional events and we’ll call it a day for now.

Californian Natives had their own secret cults that should you pay the price for them would bring you some well being.

Diplomacy in the Plains is not always easy.

The Potlach was a massively important ceremony for the Northwestern Natives. Choosing to celebrate it or not could have consequences.

You might have noticed that both my colleague and me have shown a small selection of missions for you. After the release you will have the chance to discover the other two regional mission trees (SE and California) and several TAG/culture specific ones, find some Easter eggs here and there and several other goodies. Stay tuned and see you next week!

[h2][/h2]

We are thrilled to be able to once again together with Turbolarp bring you the ultimate EUIV multiplayer experience, now in an online version inspired by The Grandest Lan Party events (2017-2019). We aim to recreate the atmosphere of the real life event, while we hope to be able to bring back the physical event soon. It is Paradox’s and Turbolarp’s vision to have a fantastic community get-together and make it an EUIV celebration.

Multiplayer Europa Universalis IV is the ultimate challenge for grand strategy game afficianadoes. Coordinating co-operative operations to take down big blue bullies before making that fatal backstab that undoes centuries of friendship. All in the name of history.

Participants will be divided into teams of three and together play one nation at the time. Collaborating in decision making, doing diplomacy and creating a nation’s chronicle will be among activities available. Adding to this, the stream audience will also have a chance to influence the experience of the participants.

Since 2017, The Grandest LAN has been the signature multiplayer event for EU4 fans, but, because of the history we are now living through, an elaborate castle event is impossible this year.

But that does not mean that the history wars have stopped! This year, the Grandest LAN is moving online, opening up the event to even more people who, in previous years, would have been deterred by the travel involved.


For more information, visit: eu4lan.com


The whole event will be livestreamed all through the day on both the 21st and 22nd of November (9:30am - 10pm CET) over at our twitch channel!

The Setup
We will have the computers set up in an actual LAN within the Paradox Offices in Stockholm. Each team uses Parsec to connect to "their" computer from which they will control their country.
Interactions and diplomacy will be carried out over Discord, and it will all be casted on Twitch where we aim to bring our viewers insight into the current events and intrigues playing out behind the scenes on top of the usual spectating of the game.