Europa Universalis IV News

Hello and Welcome to yet another Europa Universalis development diary. Today we’ll first delve into the results of the survey we sent out earlier this autumn, and also do some comparisons with the analytics we have. We’ll also talk about some minor balance changes and an interesting new feature for our future expansion.

First of all, I’d like to thank the over 10,000 people who took their time to reply to all the questions in our survey. While this is but a fraction of the entire playerbase, it gives us an indication of what the more hardcore of the audience likes, with over half of the respondents having played over 1,000 hours.

The most common play-styles, by far, as reported was role-playing and changing history. It is probably not a surprise to anyone that you viewed Victoria to have the best economy, Hearts of Iron the best military, Europa Universalis the best diplomacy and Crusader Kings the best politics.

You also overwhelmingly prefer simulation over boardgame mechanics, and you think that we should focus more on the economical buildup and flavorful content.

While the Golden Century was easily the worst expansion in your eyes, the top 5 expansions according to you were.

• Art of War
  
• Common Sense
  
• Emperor
  
• Rights of Man
  
• Mandate of Heaven
  

While talking about the survey, I thought it would be fun to look at the top 10 most played countries right now.
France 6.16%
Ottomans 5.08%
Austria 4.39%
Byzantium 4.39%
Custom Nation 4.23%
England 3.35%
Castile 3.29%
Brandenburg 3.11%
Ming 2.24%
Portugal 2.12%
A minor balance change for the people who play multiplayer and play with victory cards enabled, is the small little change that Estates will now become less loyal if you ally with nations which you have victory cards upon.

And for those that play as Cossacks and have the Sich Rada government enabled, as requested by the community, you now have the ability to raze cities, just like hordes does.

Finally, it's time to reveal another feature for our upcoming expansion, a new unit mission called Carpet Siege. It is similar to the hunt rebels mission, but with the difference that the army actively will avoid combat unless it is sure of winning, and primarily focusing on sieging down hostile territory. You can set it to just targeting specific areas on the map, or let it decide on its own when there are valid targets to consider.

Stay tuned, because next week Groogy will be back, talking about a major religion without unique mechanics that will get one.

Click here to read on the Forums

Hello everyone! Today we are going to talk about some improvements in some interfaces for how you deal with governing capacity and one new feature that uses a lot of governing capacity but also let you “keep growing” on the land you already own.

First to make it easier to manage your governing capacity we’ve been adding needed information in two places. First we have added so when a building affects governing capacity it will now show that so you can get a sense of where you will get most value out of it in your realm, helping players with larger empires.

This means buildings such as courthouses will now show how much governing capacity they will remove if built in that specific province.

Next is a little help to everyone who have been amassing a lot of vassals to hold land for them. Previously there was no way to see how much governing capacity a vassal had or how much was being used.

We’ve now added so that can be viewed under the subject interface when you go into the details window for that subject.

Now to the new feature, for the one that has extra governing capacity, a Switzerland hiding in the mountains wanting to play tall. So in a province that is at least 15 development you can expand its infrastructure to allow for another building and manufactory in it. This increases the governing cost of the province by a flat 200 which can not be reduced by province modifiers.

Then for every 15 development of the province and further 200 governing capacity you can expand the infrastructure more for more slots of buildings and manufactories.

Hope you’ve enjoyed today's development diary! Next week we’ll be back with a new diary which will be written by Johan!

Click here to read on the Forums

Hello everyone! Today we’ll be exploring two of the smaller religions in Europa Universalis IV. Zoroastrianism and Sikhism. For the coming update we’ll be working on making these more interesting by giving them their own mechanics. Keep in mind that everything you see is very much work in progress, you’ll see a lot of my very temporary coder art.

So first let’s start with Sikhism. They already got some stuff in the game using events. Throughout the game's timeline as a Sikh you will go through the various Gurus that were a big part of shaping the faith in history. Each of these gurus would add their own modifier to the religion. We are now making this more integrated by making it a mechanic and adding some more player agency for what the player can do with this.
UX is very much WIP, here it is showing you currently have Guru Nanak as your incumbent Guru and that Guru Angad is his future successor.

You still get gurus over the decades giving you various modifiers as you progress through the game. But I’ve also done that each Guru will provide three teachings unique to that guru that the player can pick between. In total there will be 30 teachings to pick between throughout the game, and once the guru that gives that teaching is succeeded the picked teaching becomes permanent and you can’t switch to the other two anymore. You can at max have 6 teachings, and for each teaching you take you will lose 1 missionary strength. Each teaching is associated with either Adm, Dip or Mil mana and cost 50 of their respective category of monarch power to enact.

As Johan mentioned last dev diary I got sick so I don’t have a full list of the new guru’s values and teachings as some of these features got literally finished this morning and I haven’t had time to fix that yet. But I’ll provide a list as soon as it’s done for the people who love to crunch the numbers.

Next thing is my favorite religion of all time and why hedgehogs are holy. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest religions still in existence and has a lot of fascinating things around it which is a shame that it has gone so long without having gotten any mechanics tied to it. If you didn’t know Hedgehogs are considered a sort of “holy dog” within Zoroastrianism, a creature of the light which is obviously why it’s the best religion.

Anyway so what are we actually doing with Zoroastrianism? Since in the start of the game they are not in any particularly strong position, a people in sort of a diaspora we’ve been focusing around that. We already have some remnants in Yazd but we are also adding the Parsi in Gujarat. At the start of the game the province Daman will start as Zoroastrians. But there is also an event that you will get if you employ a lot of Parsi Zoroastrian advisors that will let you convert the province to Parsi.

Continuing with the diaspora theme their mechanic added to them will be based on the Coptic Blessings but instead called Rituals. The Zoroastrians have been given 5 fire temples they need to rekindle, like in their old decision, and as they do they will be rewarded.
Keep in mind art here is WIP

The various rituals you can pick are as follows:
Yasna: -0.05 Yearly Corruption
Haoma: +5% Goods Produced Modifier
Navjote: +2% Missionary Strength
Manthras: +10% Governing Capacity
Dakhma: -5% Construction Cost

Also since we are talking about holy hedgehogs and zoroastrianism I believe it is only fair I show off my Lord Cyrus, King of Kings, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the world(also known as my bedroom). Click on them for larger pictures.
Curious boi Burrito boi Hungry boi Sleepy boi
Hope you’ve enjoyed today's dev diary! Do remember that today we are celebrating the 20 year anniversary of the EU Franchise. Among the hosts of the stream will be me so be sure to drop by! Cya there!

Stream Schedule (all times in CEST)
13-14 - Dev Stories from EU1 and the board game with special guest Philippe Thibaut
14-15 - Dev Stories from EU2
15-17 - Dev Stories from EU3
17-18 - Break
18-21 - EU4, events and the upcoming board game Europa Universalis: The Price of Power with Aegir Games

Stream Schedule (all times in CEST)
13-14 - Dev Stories from EU1 and the board game with special guest Philippe Thibaut
14-15 - Dev Stories from EU2
15-17 - Dev Stories from EU3
17-18 - Break
18-21 - EU4, events and the upcoming board game Europa Universalis: The Price of Power with Aegir Games