Europa Universalis IV News

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!

[h2]------------------------[/h2]



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!

[h2]------------------------[/h2]

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!

Map painters! We suspect you love all strategy games big and small, whether that's conquering the world, or managing a small group of survivors. That's why this year Europa Universalis 4 is taking part in Tacticon! TactiCon is a digital convention hosted on Steam celebrating strategy video games, and those that enjoy them.

If you are interested in picking up EU4, or any EU4 content now is a great opportunity, with savings as much as 70% off
https://store.steampowered.com/app/236850/Europa_Universalis_IV/


[h2]You can check out TactiCon 2024 here[/h2]
And say hello to our other strategy game friends!

It’s Steam Summer Sale time, which means up to 90% off various Paradox titles!

[h2]👉 Paradox Interactive Summer Sale[/h2]

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

With the winter's chill a bygone memory, and summer's bounty overflowing - now is the time to build your nation to its greatest potential.

Enjoy 70% off EUIV’s base game, and up to another 70% off selected DLC & bundles! 💪

https://store.steampowered.com/sub/977591/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22085/Europa_Universalis_IV_Ultimate_Bundle/

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.

-------------------------------

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
[expand][/expand]

Hansa
[expand]
[/expand]

Aquitaine
[expand]
[/expand]

Bohemia
[expand]
[/expand]

Germany
[expand][/expand]

Genoa/Italy
[expand]
[/expand]

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:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

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:

• Lombardy by Quarbit
• Francia by Chewy
• Lotharingia by Golem
• Capua by Laith
• Bohemia by Ludi

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!

-------------------------------

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!