Europa Universalis IV News

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Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Sadly Groogy is sick so we have to shuffle around our planning a bit and give you something that was not originally planned for today.

Today we’ll talk a little bit about what we are doing with Diplomacy for the expansion that is accompanying the 1.31 patch, as it's one of the major areas of it.

First of all, the concept of favors, which was introduced in The Cossacks, is now also unlocked by this expansion, as it will become far more used than just using it to get your allies to join you in offensive wars. More on that in later development diaries.

Secondly, we also changed how the favors were calculated, so instead of having a chance of getting a favor once a year, you now get favors overtime, depending on the same factors as impacted the chance of getting a favor before, ie the relative military power.

Finally, this new expansion will see a new diplomatic action called “Curry Favors”. This requires an active diplomat, and will slowly increase the amount of favors you have with them, depending on your diplomatic reputation and the target's opinion of you.

You will slowly lose favors over time with nations that are not your allies, nor you attempting to curry favors with.
As this was a rather short development diary, I’m adding a screenshot showing one of the events you can get if you have the horde ideagroup set.

Hopefully Groogy is back next week to write his development diary on Hedgehogs!

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Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today we’ll talk about some major game-balance changes that we are doing regarding the naval game in 1.31.

I’m not really all that great at writing long detailed development diaries, but as this one is filled with gamebalance changes, I hope you can bear with me.

First of all, we have changed the amount of Sailors you get from each development from 30 sailors to 60. This will make the amount of sailors you get scale better through the ages.

Secondly we also change the amount of sailors each ship requires, and to make them require more sailors for more advanced models. Galleys now go from 60 sailors to 180 sailors for an Archipelago Frigate, while a Three Decker will require 900 sailors.

We also made galleys more powerful in combat, by reducing their default engagement width to 0.5 instead of 1.

Speaking of naval engagement width, it now starts at 5-25 depending on tech at start, and goes all the way up to 75 at the end of the game, scaling more like land combat does. At the same time, we reduced the naval engagement width by 20% in coastal sea zones.

Two other aspects that changes by technology as well for the naval game is maintenance, which will increase over time just like it does for amies as you advance through technology, and most importantly that more advanced ships will become far faster, with the most advanced ships being 50% faster than the earliest model of the same type. Galleys however, only increase speed by 25%.

All of these fixes are there to make the naval game have more of a natural progress in quality and cost that is not just more guns on a new ship.


One other thing that will make you happy is that we changed the support mechanics for leaders, so now there is one pool for naval leaders and one for land leaders. If you have more than you can support in naval leaders it will now cost you diplomatic power and if you have more than you can support in land leaders, then it will cost you military power as all leaders did before. This will give you more leaders overall, and make it possible for you to have naval leaders as well.

Another change we are doing is making your naval power matter as much as your army power when it comes to the Liberty Desire of your overseas subjects. So if you don’t have a strong fleet your colonial nations will definitely start considering independence.

We introduced marines with 1.30, but they were a bit too weak and situational, so they are getting one major change in that their penalty has been changed from +25% shock damage taken to only +10% shock damage taken. We also increased the amount you get from naval ideas from +5% to 10%.

Finally, we also made it impossible for nations to slave raid on any territory that they have a truce with, so now you can actually protect yourself efficiently against the raiders.


Next week Groogy will take you through why hedgehogs are holy.

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Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. I’m not sure how many times I’ve written these exact words in the last 8 years, but this time it is a special one. It may not be to announce an unprecedented new feature, or to tell you guys that having two consuls in rome is a stupid idea, or anything like that..

Today I’m here to introduce the new team for Europa Universalis IV. This summer we started up and recruited for a new studio based in Barcelona to take care of the game. While Starnan and Neondt having left the team this summer, Groogy is still part of the EU team, working as game designer and programmer with us.

So Paradox Tinto, who are we?
Johan Andersson
I suspect most of you know me by now, but for those who don’t. I’ve been here since 1998 and was one of the founders of Paradox, and ran PDS as Studio Manager for 15 years, and have spent the last 5 years as a creative director there. Now I am here starting up a new studio in a new country, and this is something I’m super-excited about.
Sonia Linares
Hola! I am Sonia Linares, Studio Operations Manager at Paradox Tinto.
I started my career within the Video Games Industry over 11 years ago in Madrid. During all these years, I have worked with a multitude of AAA games and a wide range of development Studios across the globe. I also have been lucky enough to be part of different departments & functions like Publishing Operations, Product Launch, Central Development Services -Age Ratings, Localization, Certification and First Party Submissions- .
I am sure that running Paradox Tinto (Barcelona) with Johan Andersson will be one of the most challenging, enlightening and fun jobs I have ever had!
Other than that I like sports, traveling and I love sweets.
Alexander Ivannikov
Hi, I'm Alexivan. I've been working at PDS for the last 7 years on pretty much all of our projects and my current favourite PDS game is EU4. I feel very lucky and happy to be joining the Tinto team as the new Tech Lead and once again work on EU4.
In my spare time I play a lot of games and watch tons of anime, tv series, and movies. Some of my favourite games outside PDS are factorio, GTA5 MP, Terraria. When it comes to TV I would definitely recommend Watchmen, I love both the movie and the tv series. My anime recommendation for you guys would be Gintama. Leave a comment if you have suggestions on new things for me to check out.
David Horler
Hello, my name is David Horler, and I am the Art Lead at Tinto.
I began at Paradox South way back in 2013, where I worked on 3D art for Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV.
For the last 3 years I've been at Paradox Development Studio, where I started off painting the Imperator: Rome world map. Most recently I was the technical artist on Crusader Kings III, where I got to work a little bit on almost everything artsy, like the environments, to the coats of arms, and the portraits, as well as lots of slightly less artsy behind-the-scenes stuff with our excellent Engine and Tools teams.
I'm a strategy gamer and really into history, so I'm very excited to help set up a new team of GSG-focused artists where we can put into practice everything we've learnt over the last few years.
Verónica Pazos
Hey! I'm Verónica, content designer at Paradox Tinto. I joined the team just a month ago, so my work has mainly consisted of getting to know the workflow and writing lots of flavor text. From now on, I'll be taking part in the design team and I'm really excited about creating a new heresy (and hopefully more content for your favorite countries). I like writing, History and games, so I kind of run out of hobbies coming here.
Jordi Santiago
Hi, I'm Jordi Santiago, gameplay programmer at Paradox Tinto. Me and some of my fellow workers here in Tinto have just joined Paradox, so I'm still getting familiar with code and stuff. Hopefully, I will be soon making your favorite games just a little better.
Adrián González
Hi! I'm Adrián and I've just arrived at Paradox Tinto. I'm a software engineer who will be working as a Gameplay programmer (or whatever is related to code!). Our team has just started and I'm very excited to see what we can build together. If I'm not playing and learning about EUIV, you can find me at Hallownest, Toussaint, or Caed Nua :)

Next week we are getting another content designer, and by the end of October another programmer. We are also recruiting UI & Concept Artists, and an UX Designer!

Building a new team is something that takes time. A programmer, even if he is very skilled with a lot of experience, takes a fair bit of time to learn a codebase, until that person is able to create new features. The same is for designers or artists, as it takes time to understand philosophies and processes. However, we have already working on new things together, and today we’ll show you the first things!

For a long time we have had one of the idea groups you can pick from switch depending on if you are a republic or not. Republics would get plutocracy and the others Aristocracy. Now in the next big update, we’ll have 3 new idea groups that can become available depending on what type of country you play.

Horde Government Ideas
horde_gov_ideas = {
category = MIL

bonus = {
cavalry_power = 0.25
}

trigger = {
has_reform = steppe_horde
}

horse_lords = {
cavalry_cost = -0.33
}
beyond_the_sun = {
ae_impact = -0.1
}
mandate_of_the_khan = {
religious_unity = 0.25
}
there_shall_be_no_grass = {
land_attrition = -0.2
}
horde_loyalty = {
global_unrest = -1
}
watchers_of_the_silk_road = {
caravan_power = 0.20
}
a_magnanimous_empire = {
num_accepted_cultures = 2
}

ai_will_do = {
factor = 20
}
}
Divine Ideas
theocracy_gov_ideas = {
category = MIL

bonus = {
global_heretic_missionary_strength = 0.01
church_loyalty_modifier = 0.1
brahmins_hindu_loyalty_modifier = 0.1
brahmins_muslim_loyalty_modifier = 0.1
}

trigger = {
government = theocracy
}
servants_of_god = {
devotion = 1
}
by_the_grace_of_god = {
fire_damage_received = -0.1
}
friends_in_high_places = {
leader_cost = -0.2
}
flesh_is_weak = {
land_morale = 0.1
}
alpha_and_omega = {
enforce_religion_cost = -0.1
culture_conversion_cost = -0.1
}
conviction_of_sin = {
global_unrest = -2
}
martyrs = {
global_manpower_modifier = 0.15
}
ai_will_do = {
factor = 0.9
modifier = {
factor = 0
has_idea_group = humanist_ideas
}
}
}
Indigenous Ideas
indigenous_ideas = {
category = MIL

bonus = {
global_institution_spread = 0.25
}

trigger = {
has_government_attribute = enables_natives_idea_group
}

indigenous_bountiful_land = {
tribal_development_growth = 0.05
development_cost = -0.05
}
indigenous_irregular_warfare = {
hostile_attrition = 1
}
indigenous_constitution = {
reform_progress_growth = 0.25
}
indigenous_braves = {
land_morale = 0.10
}
indigenous_controlled_burns = {
global_manpower_modifier = 0.2
}
indigenous_trade_with_foreigners = {
idea_cost = -0.1
}
indigenous_treaties = {
province_warscore_cost = -0.2
}

ai_will_do = {
factor = 1.0
}
}

When it comes to policies, these idea groups will be considered as aristocracy. Next week I’m back to talk a lot about some important balance changes we have been doing, with galleys, marines and other important things.

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