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Dev Diary: More Missions

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!

The Grandest Virtual LAN Party - LIVESTREAM - twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

[h2]
The return of the Grandest Lan
[/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.

Dev Diary: First Nation Missions

Click here to read on the Forums

Good morning! I’m skingrado, one of the new content designers for EU4 at Paradox Tinto, nice to meet you all! To begin with, I think it’s very important that you know that my favorite castle is Loarre, that’s my main personality trait, so I hope that gives you an idea of who I am (and, as you can imagine, I’m also a big fan of GSGs, and I used to play a lot of CK with my dad). But today I’m here to show you some of the things we’ve been working on for the North American Natives, since a lot of you asked for more content after the reveal of the new mechanics (nothing to do with castles, I’m afraid).

We’re creating completely new native mission trees (since until now they mainly had the generic missions) and we’ve started by designing six new geographical mission trees available to all tribes, according to their localization and culture at the time of contact (i.e. very close to the start of the game). You’ll notice that some of the traditional cultural areas have been merged into one single tree (Northwest Coast + Plateau, for example), more on this to come next week. I’ll be now talking about some that I’ve done:

(Notice that all icons are still placeholders).

The Northeastern Woodlands extend from the Atlantic Coast to the eastern Great Plains, going slightly above the Great Lakes in the north and bordering the Southeastern Woodlands in the south, roughly including the present Mid-Atlantic states. People from this region generally lived in villages with a few hundred inhabitants and used wigwams and longhouses for shelter, as well as canoes for traveling, fishing, trading and warfare. These villages were often placed near their crops, since the so-called Eastern Agricultural Complex was their main source of food, characteristic that they shared with the nearby Southeastern Woodlands.
Their social organization was based on clans, which were often named after some relevant animal to the area, such as wolf or bear (you’ll see more on clans in the events).

Some highlights of this tree include:
  • Building tall and preparing for war with the missions Wigwams and Longhouses and Raising Palisades will grant you permanent claims in the Great Lakes, apart from local defensiveness and manpower modifiers.
  • Conquering the Northeast after conquering the Great Lakes will grant you a +5% to the morale of your armies.
  • I have talked before about the importance of the Eastern Agricultural Complex, so having 3 irrigation canals and a total of 50 development will improve your production efficiency and grant you some extra gold.

Then we have the North American Southwest, which mainly includes Oasisamerica and borders the Plains-Great Basin to the north. People from this region farmed as a complement to their hunter-gatherer economy (in the case of Aridoamerica tribes) or even had a truly agricultural society in the case of the Oasisamerican tribes. They also cherished precious minerals, like turquoise and cinnabar, and had some interesting ancestors that we will address now on some of the missions:
  • “Against the Desert” and “Taming of the Sands” compensate the player’s concern for devastation and development, since the Chihuahuan Desert is home to some of these tribes and its harsh living conditions are rewarded with claims in the region that will provide a tool for the spreading of such knowledge to neighboring provinces.
  • Yucca Palm Trees were used as food and as the base material for the making of baskets or even “shampoos”, so controlling their province of production will also increase the local production efficiency and boost the economy.
  • Turquoise Mining will require owning provinces with gems, salt or gold, in which mines could be created, and will also boost production and prestige, since turquoise was a valued trade good.
  • Lastly, Paquimé was the ancestral home of the Mogollon people, and includes a series of archeological ruins that were burnt around the year 1340, prior to the start of the game. Owning the province and helping rebuild it will decrease the construction and development cost by -10%.

Now moving to the part that is slightly more fun, we have designed mission trees specific to some of the best known native tribes. Today, I’ll be focusing on the Iroquois:

As you can see, culture groups in Native America have been changed, and these missions will be available to those that have “iroquois” as their primary culture. These tribes are mainly known for the famous “Iroquois League” or “Iroquois Confederacy”, which was established prior to European contact and granted these nations security and protection, as well as a saying in the Great Council that ruled over them, much like how the new Federation mechanic is going to work. The focus of this tree is to form said Confederacy and extend its power:
  • The Great Peacemaker will require you to have a longhouse in which an assembly can be met, and a reduced local autonomy. This will grant you a theologian named The Great Peacemaker himself, who is the legendary founder of the Confederacy and will lower your unrest.
  • After gaining some allies through Haudenosaunee (I know it’s a bit of a mouthful, but that’s how Iroquois called themselves), and annexing the five most prominent nations of the League, your duty will be to protect the eastern coast from European explorers, specially French, since the League engaged in the decades-long Beaver Wars against them in 1609.
  • False Faces will require you to have a spymaster and a spy network of at least 25 in any other country, as well as some diplomatic power. False Faces Masks were used during ceremonies to conceal one’s true nature and completing the mission will boost your spy power and spy detection by +25% each.
  • Wampum Shells were the main currency used in these nations, so building a storehouse to hoard them will increase your mercantilism.

And, of course, we have also added some events. Some are generic, others will be linked to the totemism “rework” and a few will be specific to certain tribes as well. In this case, the Iroquois culture group gets a new event chain called “The Mourning Wars”.

Mourning Wars were fought when some of the tribe’s warriors were killed in battle and the spiritual balance of the village had to be restored. For Iroquois nations, grief did not come only for the loss of a loved one, but also for the loss of harmony. Thus, they would try to compensate for it, and that compensation came in the form of mourning wars. Now, a series of events will let you decide whether you should kill in revenge for the killing, or maybe take some captives in replacement for the dead members of the tribe.

Expect more information on this matter next week! Thank you for reading :)

The Grandest Virtual Party 21st & 22nd of November - Livestreamed on Twitch!

[h2]
The return of the Grandest Lan
[/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.

Dev Diary: Totemism

Click here to read on the Forums

Hey everyone! So when we introduced the new natives mechanics several of you were asking why we weren’t changing Totemism as well while at it. So since then and while I was working on the Sikh Gurus and Zoroastrianism I figured I should give it a shot and try to give them something as many of you were pointing out, it is one of the major religions at the start of the game and it deserves some love. Be warned a lot of work in progress values & especially really bad coder art will be shown!

Now North America is a big place, and how we are using Totemism in the game is sort of a catch all for several very distinct mythoses and with that also comes the challenge of figuring out flavor that is general enough and fits all of these as well. What I could find as a best candidate for a fun mechanic that could fit for all of these very different cultures were that they all have legendary figures, and the oral tradition of great deeds. Like Gloosecap of the Abenaki, or Esa the Wolf of the Shoshone.

So now as you progress through the game, you can add one of your previous rulers to your mythos. You can have a maximum of 10 stories added at any point. This costs 100 Diplomatic power but they can also be removed later on for a severe stability hit. It’s not intended to be something that you switch around often but I don’t want to lock you in entirely either.

Adding an ancestor’s story to your religion will have them provide the personality they had in real life be applied to your country for all future, with some modifications which we will get into in a bit. It will be a weaker version than they had in real life but still a nice bonus for you even as they have died.

So with this change in order to keep things balanced rulers who follow Totemism will only have one personality, since it will be combined together with the benefits they get from the religion as well. But these are special and they scale with the rulers skill. This does mean that you can get a ruler with 7.5% discipline bonus instead of 5%. This is also to feed into the ancestor stories where not all rulers will actually be useful to be made into a story. This does mean that totemism needs it’s entire own setup of personalities scripted up but we are aiming to try and match the original ones.

The intent is since you have 10 ancestor stories you can collect, each will just provide a bit of the full picture. It's a religion you build up over time by reconnecting to previous rulers you’ve had.

Also here's a preliminary set of values for the Gurus and their teaching. The value next to the Guru's name is applied by the Guru while they are alive. The ones in the lists are their teachings and can be picked by you as the player. These values are still work in progress but I know people been asking for a complete list.
Guru Nanak: +1 Admin Power
  • Share and Consume: -1 Unrest
  • Work Honestly: 5% Production Eff
  • Recite His Name: -2.5% Regiment Cost

Guru Angad: +1 Military Power
  • Gurmukhi Script: -5% Tech Cost
  • Temple Langar: +10% Church Loyalty
  • Wrestling Akhara: +0.1 Yearly Army Professionalism

Guru Amar Das: +1 Diplomatic Power
  • Dasvnandh Collection: +5% Tax Modifier
  • Anand Karaj: +1 Diplomatic Reputation
  • Sanghat Equality: +10% Nobles Loyalty

Guru Ram Das: +1 Admin Power
  • Legitimize Inheritance: +0.25 Legitimacy (or +0.1 Rep Trad, etc. etc.)
  • Scripture Hymns: +0.5 Prestige
  • Masand System: +10% Manpower Modifier

Guru Arjan: +1 Diplomatic Power
  • Adi Granth: +10% Institution Spread
  • The Abode of God: +10% Rel Unity
  • Martyrdom: 5% Land Morale

Hargobind: +1 Military Power
  • Throne of the Timeless One: Same as Legitimize Inheritance
  • Protection of the Poor: -0.025 War Exhaustion
  • Miri and Piri: +2.5% Discipline

Guru Har Rai: +1 Diplomatic Power
  • Impartial Manjis: -0.05 Corruption
  • The Fragrance of a Flower: +10% Improve Relations
  • One Guru: +5% Nobles Loyalty

Guru Har Krishan: +1 Diplomatic Power
  • Treat the Sick: +1 Monarch Admin Skill
  • Illiterate Recites Saloks: +1 Monarch Diplomatic Skill
  • Young Humility: +1 Monarch Military Skill

Guru Tegh Bahadur: +1 Admin Power
  • The Word of Sikh: +1 Missionary
  • All Kings must Pass: +2 Tolerance of Heretics
  • Resist Persecution: +1 Hostile Attrition

Guru Gobind Singh: +1 Admin Power
  • Pluralism: -10% Advisor Cost
  • Dharam Yudh: 50% War Taxes Cost
  • The Khalsa Sikh: +0.1 Yearly Army Professionalism

Guru Granth Sahib: -50% State Maintenance Cost, -25% Regiment Drill Loss
  • Eternally Living Guru: -10% Development Cost
  • Divine Justice: 10% Trade Efficiency
  • The Unchanging Writing: 50% Drill Gain Modifier

And that is it for today! Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next week!