Europa Universalis IV News

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy

Hey! Everyone I am sorry for this very late dev diary today but I had a mini-vacation this weekend and yesterday in order to participate in the Ludum Dare Game Jam. So let’s jump right into the new features.

First up is an addition to the Custom Nations Designer

We’ve reworked the underlying sprite pack system to make it a bit easier to work with, this also enabled us to make a feature that has been requested ever since nation designers were a thing. You can now pick and choose how you want your nation's armies to look.

Now some time ago we talked about the new Revolutionary mechanics coming with the Emperor and we mentioned that we weren’t happy with the effect of the Revolutionary Zeal. I think the phrase that I used was that they weren’t “sexy enough”.

So for one, we moved the Reform Progress Gain that the Revolutionaries would get to the Republican Tradition value to help both Republics and Revolutionaries. Instead we put Special Unit Force Limit there as we will be giving all Revolutionary nations access to a unique unit type.

The Revolutionary Guard

These are the most zealous revolutionaries in your armed forces. Formed to guard the nation against the reactionary threat of King’s and their lackeys. They can be built as Infantry, Cavalry or even Artillery.

These units can also be upgraded and made either more plentiful or be given more elite training for a higher cost.
Elite Revolutionary Guard Training

• +2.5% Revolutionary Guard Discipline
  
• +100% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance
  
• -10% Special Units Force Limit

Professional Revolutionary Guard Training

• -25% Revolutionary Guard Regiment Drill Loss
  
• +50% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance
  

Mass Revolutionary Guard Training

• +50% Revolutionary Guard Regiment Drill Loss
  
• +10% Special Units Force Limit
  

Vanguard Revolutionary Guard Training

• -10% Shock Damage Received
  
• -10% Fire Damage Received
  
• +50% Revolutionary Guard Maintenance
  

You can combine all of these together, however you want, the limitations that are there are if you have Cradle of Civilization and how high your army professionalism is. For example Elite Revolutionary Guard requires an army professionalism of 80. If you don’t have Cradle of Civilization then values get converted to other things.

Next week’s development diary will be focusing on the great Kingdom of Bohemia and the Hussites.

And before I leave you for today, here’s the cavalry unit from the best sprite pack now available in the nation designer.

Join us over on Twitch

Week 6 of the Europa Universalis 4 is continues over on Twitch. Join us to see if the Aztecs will survive contact with the Spanish, and how the the cads fall for the Catholic and Protestant Leagues. France is in flames and West Africa is split between two players. Let's find out who dies and who survives.

Please remember that this is the hottest of hot code, so there might be technical difficulties as we are testing the multiplayer stability with this game.

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Neondt

Good morning! We’ve talked about Imperial Incidents in previous dev diaries, and since then the design and UI has been refined quite a lot. Today I’ll be revealing two more Imperial Incidents as well as changes to the Great Peasants’ War.

Decline of the Hanseatic League
The EUIV period saw the Hanseatic League fall from the dominant commercial power in Northern Europe to a minor clique of merchant guilds. If Lubeck loses its dominance in its home trade node after the Age of Discovery, they will receive an event where they can choose to petition the Emperor for aid. This triggers an Imperial Incident in which the Emperor has three options:

1. Ignore the plight of the Hanseatic League. The Emperor gets a harsh opinion penalty with Lubeck and its League members.
   
2. Reinforce the Hanseatic League by asking the Free Cities of the Empire to join. All Free Cities are promoted to join the Hanseatic League, and each one that joins gives Imperial Authority to the Emperor. Lubeck and its League members will appreciate this.
   
3. Proclaim an Embargo against the League’s rival. The dominant power in the Lubeck node gets reduced trade power in several trade nodes, and the Emperor gets an opinion bonus with Lubeck and its League members.
   

The Reformers Protest
The Reformers Protest is an Imperial Incident that fires after the Protestant League is victorious in the League War if Reformed countries make up a sufficiently large portion of the total number of Princes in the Empire.
This Incident inducts the new Protestant Emperor into their new role by forcing them into a major decision. The Emperor has three options:

1. Refuse to make any compromise and protect the hard-won victory of the Protestant League. Choosing this option will prompt all Reformed Princes to reconsider their membership in the Empire, with larger AI nations being much more likely to leave than smaller AI nations.
   
2. Set Religious Peace in the Empire. Protestant will no longer be the official faith of the Empire. Emperors and electors can now be of any Christian religion. This will satisfy the Reformed Princes, but also makes it possible for the Catholics to return to power in the future.
   
3. Abdicate the Imperial throne and proclaim the Reformed faith to be the official religion of the Empire. An AI Emperor will only pick this option if they have been reduced to a single province, or if they have less than 50 warscore against a Reformed Prince.
   

Great Peasants' War - Again!
I first talked in detail about the Great Peasants’ War in October, but since then we’ve decided to expand on it to give more agency to players with an interest in either side of the conflict. Here are the most significant changes we made:

1. The Emperor can now use the Crush the Peasantry CB while the GPW is ongoing, and can target any Peasant Republic in the HRE regardless of border distance. This allows the Emperor to actively take the fight to the peasants.
   
2. Added new Peasant Revolt CB for Peasant Republics. It is usable during the GPW. It can also be used after the GPW if the peasantry manage to enforce their demands on the Emperor. This CB allows you to force other HRE Princes to become Peasant Republics, giving agency to the peasant side of the conflict.
   
3. Added decisions for both the Emperor and Peasant Republics to end the GPW early and trigger the Imperial Incident if they accumulate enough score for their side. Tooltips on this decision will show the current score.
   
4. When a newly-formed Peasant Republic is forced to change their government during the GPW, the total score is moved in favour of the aristocracy.
   
5. Score is added to the peasant side when a Prince becomes a Peasant Republic during the GPW regardless of how it happened.
   

A Message from our Artist and our UX Designer
A valued and talented team member, our artist, is leaving us today to work on another PDS project. As it was their last day, I asked if there was anything they'd like to share with the community before their departure. This was their response:
The feature that our artist enjoyed the most was probably working with the Hegemon icons. The shape and visuals for them are something new but still holds that EU4 spirit in them. The favorite is of course the naval icon with the fabulous unicorn.

Other things they loved to work on was making the new bg for the settings screen. It now speaks unity and actually… makes sense?

The HRE windows and pop-up was of course a challenge but thanks to our UX designer they made the interface work and look beautiful as well! Look at those curtains, so smooth.

Our artist also wants to add that “At the end of the day it’s always been so nice to see the reactions to the new stuff we add or update and what you, the community enjoy to see from us and what makes your heart tick with joy when it comes to Europa Universalis 4”

As our UX designer’s last day on the project, they'd like to share the process behind the new HRE screen:

“The HRE was my favorite to work on, because it was a big challenge.

I always start exploring ideas, different layouts and how to display the information. After a few iterations, we decided to move on with the 3rd idea."
3 different layouts and explorations

As we started developing, we realized that the initial idea for incidents -beautiful and fancy tapestry- was not clear enough. So we decided to go on with buttons instead.

Because of that the entire layout needed to change, as we didn’t need all that space for incidents.

To show a new idea to the team, I did a simple wireframe, moving the reforms to the upper part and incidents down. Also decided to display imperial authority and dominant faith in a clearer way.
Wireframe to discuss with the team Mockup based on the wireframe

And finally, for the last iteration, we noticed that the numbers inside the buttons were not clear and didn’t help players to make a decision. To solve that, I suggested using an icon representing what kind of decision was that and added the numbers of supporters.
Last mockup

“It was an honor to be part of EU4 and hope you all enjoy Emperor!”

We all wish both our artist and our UX Designer the best of luck in the future, and we're sure they'll go on to do great things at PDS.

That’s all for today! Next week Groogy will talk about a new feature coming in Emperor as well as a very cool feature for Custom Nations. And since I’m here I’ll also reveal that the much-anticipated Hussite/Bohemia dev diary is scheduled for the week after next. Hope you all have a great week!

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy

Hey everyone! Today we’ll be talking about two changes, part of the patch coming along with the Emperor expansion. You’ve probably already spotted them both if you had a keen eye on one of our streams.

First feature is part of the Governing Capacity rework and some small rework of Government Reform Progress. We’ve changed so that changing a government reform no longer causes you to gain 10 corruption, instead it costs Government Reform progress to switch on a level you’ve already picked.

Now to the new feature that will be interacting both with Governing Capacity and the Reform Progress. The original intent with Reform Progress was that the larger your empire was, the slower you would be reforming your government and progressing through the reforms. Hence why it is affected by the autonomy of your empire as while expanding heavily your autonomy on average will be higher.

So in that spirit as well we are introducing a choice for the player to instead of reforming their government, they can expand the capabilities of their administration in order to integrate more of their conquered territories as core states. This action increases in cost every time it’s used.

This gives the player besides having to pick what land should be states, trade companies or territory, also a choice on if to advance and modernize their government or if to focus on making sure you have full control over the territory that you possess.

Next thing is a new institution we’ve added that is to go together with several of our late game additions we’ve been doing in this patch. We felt that you could just skip by without any technological disparity in the world for the last 80 years So we added a last institution to represent the Industrial revolution. This revolution started sometime after the 1750, as coal, steam engines saw their use increase and industries grew throughout Europe.

The requirements spawning are very much focused on the wealth from nations that have industrialized. It will spawn in any province that has 30 development, a Furnace built, the owner of the province are the leading producers of either iron, cloth or coal. If it is before 1760 it also requires that the province is in the highest trade node in the world. If the player lacks Rule Britannia, then coal and furnace requirements are replaced to focus on simply iron and cloth manufacturies.

This will give a spurt of technological advancement at the end of the game giving those who have modernized their economy an advantage.


So that’s it for this development diary, short but sweet. Next one will be written by @neondt and will be about the content regarding Imperial Diet’s such as Incidents and will be fairly more substantial.

Click here to read the latest Dev Diary by Groogy

Hello everyone! Today’s Development Diary will be focusing on features part of the Emperor expansion. These features aim to enrich the gameplay surrounding the Holy Roman Empire, both for Emperor and Princes part of the Empire.

You might have noticed that there’s been some quite heavy changes to a very old interface in our Developer Clash.

So now let’s go through these changes today. First up is the new reforms. We wanted to accomodate more playstyles than simply always uniting the Empire under the Emperor. So the Reforms have been divided up to three types, Common, Decentralized and Centralized. In order to access either the Decentralized or Centralized path you need to first get some of the Common reforms. Specifically you need to establish a permanent diet for the Empire.

The common reforms are

Call for Reichsreform

• -5% Construction and Development cost in Imperial Provinces.
  
• Enables Imperial Ban
  

Institute Reichsregiment

• Emperor gets +1 Diplomat, +1 Diplomatic Reputation
  
• Imperial Provinces gets -2 Unrest
  

Absolute Reichsstabilität

• Imperial Provinces gets -25% State Maintenance

Enact Gemeiner Pfennig

• The Emperor gets 0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  
• All Princes gets +1 Diplomatic Reputation.

Perpetual Diet

• +50% Imperial Authority Gain
  
• Establishes the Perpetual Diet in a Free City.

Create the Landsknechtwesen

• Mercenaries with home in HRE are cheaper for HRE Members by 25%.

Ewiger Landfriede

• Emperor gets 0.5 Monthly Prestige
  
• All members gets -5% Tech cost
  
• Imperial Provinces gets +10% Institutional Spread.
  
• Disables internal HRE Wars

After you’ve taken the 5th reform, Perpetual Diet, you can go into one of the specialized paths. However these are mutually exclusive and you can’t go into both.
Following is the Decentralized Reforms

Establish the Reichstag Collegia

• +3 Free Cities

Expand the Gemeiner Pfennig

• Emperor gets +100 Manpower per Prince
  
• Electors gets 200 Manpower per Prince
  
• Imperial Princes gets 10% Friendly Movement speed.
  

Embrace Rechenschaft Measures

• +1% Imperial Authority per Prince.
  
• +1 Max Electors
  

Geteilte Macht

• Electors get +0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  
• -5% Development cost in Imperial Provinces
  

Reichskrieg

• Emperor & Electors get +500 Manpower Per Prince when at war against Imperial Enemies
  
• Enables Reichskrieg Diplomatic Interaction.
  

Following is the Centralized Reforms
Reform the Hofgericht

• Emperor gets -10% Core Construction cost
  

Curtail the Imperial Estates

• +25% Imperial Authority
  

Proclaim Erbkaisertum

• +25% Imperial Authority
  
• HRE becomes hereditary
  

Revoke the Privilegia

• +25% Imperial Authority
  
• Princes & Free Cities gets -10% Stability Cost
  
• Members are given a choice to stay within the empire and become a vassal under the Emperor or to leave the empire.
  

Renovatio Imperii

• The Emperor unites the empire under the Holy Roman Empire tag.
  

The centralized reforms are based on the old vanilla reforms to unite the empire with some slight changes. The idea is still that you are uniting the empire under one monarch. The Decentralized path has more of a focus on a strong united empire by devolving some of the responsibilities and powers to the Electors.

The last reform on the Decentralized path might not unite the entire Empire in one tag under the Emperor, but it does give the Emperor a powerful tool to call upon the entire empire in a war against the empire’s enemies. This costs 25 Imperial Authority.

If you become Emperor and the previous Emperor has gone into a path you didn’t want, you can now also revoke reforms once per Emperor. This act costs 50 Imperial Authorities just like adding a reform.

To give the Empire a bit of life we’ve implemented something we call the Imperial Incidents. These are big dynamic historical events that affect huge swaths of Europe. From the Burgundian Inheritance, the German Peasant War, the Question of the Swiss to the Dutch Revolt. In total we’ve made 13 of these.

Every single prince will be allowed to weigh in on the issues at hand. For instance, in a case where Burgundy is properly invited to join the Empire, Princes at the border worried about the duke’s ambitions might not want to permit that.

However the Emperor still gets to pick what option he wants to happen, but if it goes against the diet it will hurt the unity of the empire considerably. The Emperor will either gain or lose imperial authority depending on how the diet positions itself in the incident. It calculates this relative between your pick and the option with most support (besides your pick so if you picked the most supported one it takes the second most picked). Princes are worth 0.2 Imperial Authority each and Electors are worth 1 Imperial Authority. Besides the Imperial Authority there’s also opinion changes with members of the empire depending on what you pick.

Together with these new features we’ve done quite a few balance changes. First let’s cover how things are added to the empire. We don’t want you to keep a “reserve of provinces to add” in order to burst through the reforms of the HRE. We want a “healthy” empire is what leads to progress within it. So when you join all legible provinces gets added at once and a lump sum of 10 IA is given. You can add more provinces as you conquer but this is also done with all provinces all at once in the HRE screen instead for one by one. This does also mean that when the Reformation hits and if left unchecked, it becomes a serious blow to the authority of the emperor.

Of course we’re giving the Emperor some more ways to garden his Empire though, for starters there are now 12 Free Cities at start which gives a good baseline of Imperial Authority generation. Overall there’s a lot more princes & fabricating claims within the empire is 50% more expensive. This together means it’s easier to keep the empire above the 25 princes limit for a lot longer. We’ve also made it easier for the Emperor to enforce peace within the Empire by being able to ignore the opinion requirement so you no longer only have the Imperial Ban as an option.

We’ve also added a Force into HRE CB that the Emperor can use. Nations that have their capital in the same continent and that borders the Empire can be forced in through this treaty.

That’s it for today! Next development diary will be two things you’ve seen hinted here and there from time to time in various screenshots from previous development diaries and in the dev clash.