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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of January 2018

Good morning all. Tuesday has arrived and as usual delivers double excitement: the next episode in the EU4 Dev Clash, and a new development diary. Last week @Trin Tragula took the wheel and showed off the map changes which will roll out with the upcoming 1.25 update. Before we start talking about the features that come with its accompanying yet currently unannounced Immersion Pack, today I will be showing off another free change with 1.25, which is the Mission System.

Missions in EU3 were a real gamble. You hoped for a good or even possible mission and without hitting up the wiki or trawling through the game files had no idea what you could even be tasked with. You got said mission without choice and would either cancel or try to complete it. EU4 improved on this by always offering you up to 3 missions, one of which you would select and either complete or cancel before getting a new batch of missions. While it was an improvement, it still had the shortcomings of you not being quite sure what all missions you would be able to get for your nations, how to unlock them and even getting missions which would be detrimental for you to do. The missions system is something new players often look to for guidance and when it tells them to simply get 50 prestige or to improve relations with their rival, well, you can see why advice for new players can often counter intuitively be to ignore missions.

All this changes in 1.25 with the new Mission System. rather than picking from a short list of missions, all missions for your nation will be available from the very start, and as you fulfill the criteria for them, you will be alerted as such and can go to the newly segregated Missions tab to claim your reward. Rewards have been accordingly made more relevant, longer lasting and often grant claims towards more missions down the line. Let's take a look at the mission chain from one of my favourite nations, Byzantium, with their Purple Phoenix missions.

byz PP.jpg

humble expansion from my casual Byzantium campaign. Art/layout not final

All Byzantine missions are visible from the start and the progression through them is shown. When the budding Byzantine player reconquers Greece, they will be given a timed reward as well as the claims to help fulfilling the next missions: Recover Albania and Conquer Bulgaria. Once these are completed, they will again be able to claim their reward and work down the mission chain. The mission paths are also split for their different directions to go in, catering towards Western expansion, Anatolian recovery and reclaiming the islands. Mission rewards must be claimed in order, although all missions can be completed throughout a campaign.

byz no pp.jpg

End of the Byzantium mission chain without Purple Phoenix


All nations with specific missions are having those transferred over to this new system. Additionally we have added generic missions for all nations as well as region specific missions so that Europeans can have different missions available to them than, say, Africans or New World Natives. We have also taken the opportunity to clean up older missions while we adapt old ones to work with this new system.

France loveley art.jpg

French Missions, complete with lovely coder art. Something seems odd about the Hebrides though...

This mission change is a free part of the 1.25 Update and our aim is to have the missions feel more relevant for nations, as well as serving as a guiding light for newer players.

I'll try to pre-emptively answer some questions:

  • How do I select a mission?
    • Unlike the previous mission system, you do not select your missions, they are all visible from the game start. All missions at the top of the mission trees will be "active" and when you fulfill an active mission you can go to claim its reward, making any missions below it connected by arrows in its chain active,
  • In the old system selecting a mission would give you the claim/CB you need for the mission, how is that handled now?
    • In most cases, preceding missions will give claims/CBs as a reward which can be used to fulfill the following missions.
  • How does mission gating work?
    • A mission can both be a prerequisite for multiple missions a well as require multiple missions to be completed before it becomes active
  • How moddable is this?
    • Extensively.

Next week we'll start talking about what's coming with the yet unannounced Immersion Pack, due to release alongside 1.25. until then, we shall admire the Ottoman missions in the new system, in all their behemothic glory.

Ottomissions.jpg
 
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But I presume you don't play with random nations and random development every single time? You're fine with the 1444 setup being historically accurate relatively speaking but as soon as you click PLAY you want no limits and no guidance. Seems like what you're really saying is your acceptable threshold for railroading is a lot less than most players.

Actually, I play without random nations and development, but I'm not fine with many things in the game. I don't like lucky nations and national ideas. Unique government irk me because they are linked to specific tags and not to what you are really doing with your countries. What I would like would be more bonuses linked to the countries' situations in the game and less railroading, be it in the form of bonuses or in the form of missions.

I tried HoI4, and while I understand the need of some direction to a game covering far less time than EUIV, I still am sceptic towards focus trees and I don't like how the developpers seem to be expanding the game by adding more focuses rather than by providing global mechanics which would help to create similar results. Seeing the national focuses ported in a different form in EUIV doesn't bring me joy.

Ideally, countries would be pushed to act like their historical counterparts, not because of some railroading, but because it would be sensible for them to go this route given the game's mechanics.
 
Generally I like being surprised, but in EUIV's system this will work a whole lot better. This way I don't lose out on missions if I do something too early, and I also will be able to take my time on a mission instead of rushing it (or cancelling it) so I can get the next one. Also regional specific missions hopefully means we don't get the same "Develop a foothold in X" or "Colonize X" missions in every country's campaigns.

I hope this also means that this opens the door for more and more tag-specific missions to be gradually added into the game. Anything that brings more individuality to the various nations is a plus.
 
What if for instance, as Poland you annex the TO instead of vassalising it, then the TO cores are removed, one way or another? This is just one extreme example, but even if Poland only annexed the TO with its cores in tact, spitting them out as vassals later down the line would be very impractical. So would that block the rest of the mission tree? If so, then there should be a way for those blocks to become outdated or skipped.

Missions are designed so that they can never be blocked by something like a country not existing.
 
I wanted improvements to missions, but I am deeply disappointed with this one. I use the current mission system to drive my campaigns. I always pick from a specific place on the list and work from there. The randomness has given me the best games I have ever played and livened up some otherwise boring paths. I typically use achievements as an overlay to guide me between missions and give an overarching theme. This system is too linear and far removed from the sandbox that EU4 claims to be.
 
I wanted improvements to missions, but I am deeply disappointed with this one. I use the current mission system to drive my campaigns. I always pick from a specific place on the list and work from there. The randomness has given me the best games I have ever played and livened up some otherwise boring paths. I typically use achievements as an overlay to guide me between missions and give an overarching theme. This system is too linear and far removed from the sandbox that EU4 claims to be.
Sorry, but no, missions were a disconnected relic from EU3.
 
@Trin Tragula You mentioned regional missions. How does this effect nations that get exiled or choose to change their focus? Let's say for example Portugal normally has regional missions for conquering North Africa/Iberia but gets beaten and exiled to the New World. Will their new regional missions be about conquering all of Brazil or will they retain their normal missions? Is it dependant on the location of your capital or where you have your most development?

PS: Will the RNW affect colonizing missions as well?
 
@DDRJake @Trin Tragula do you know what the moddability of these trees is going to be? are we going to be able to change existing missions? add new missions to existing trees? make trees for countries that only have generic? is there a limit to the types of modifiers you can do or is it the same functionality as decisions? etc.
 
@DDRJake @Trin Tragula do you know what the moddability of these trees is going to be? are we going to be able to change existing missions? add new missions to existing trees? make trees for countries that only have generic? is there a limit to the types of modifiers you can do or is it the same functionality as decisions? etc.
 
I wanted improvements to missions, but I am deeply disappointed with this one. I use the current mission system to drive my campaigns. I always pick from a specific place on the list and work from there. The randomness has given me the best games I have ever played and livened up some otherwise boring paths. I typically use achievements as an overlay to guide me between missions and give an overarching theme. This system is too linear and far removed from the sandbox that EU4 claims to be.

This system has been in the game since 1.0. The only difference is presentation as well as minor rule changes, and that some missions were added/removed. But Historical and flavor missions have always been in EU4.

True, but the bonuses are nice.

I am wondering how HRE related missions will work now.

I guess the nations in HRE region will get missions to get elected or become electors, pass late Imperial Reforms, win a League War, etc.
 
Based on what Trin said last week, Scotland wasn't getting any new tags.

However, could be that's changed and Scotland's getting a "Lord of the Isles" vassal to play with?

Been asking for this for years. Hope it's true. Arguably it should also include Inverness but maybe that's a balance issue
 
So is no one going to confirm/deny that we have the Western Isles?


About the Hebrides: does it read "The Isles"? It sure looks very much like a new tag that wasn't there last week. :D

Isle of Man is being added to the game and have been given its own tag.

I'm kinda confused about the fact that some trees only make sense if you pick up Exploration/Expansion or get a colonist some other way.

Are all nations going to get their own colonial missions?

Probably not. Mostly those that did that historically.

Will any of these reward permanent buffs? Or is it just permanent claims to reduce the monarch point cost of doing them? It'd be nice if the Ottomans took the entire path down to Algiers if they were rewarded for it, especially in multiplayer.

Permanent claims for the next mission in the tree it looks like. Also the buffs will be longer but nor permanent.
 
Well, these are diaries about things that are in development, and all things are subject to change during the development process...

As a fellow Scot I believe in you to re-instate my Macdonald ancestors as Lords of the Isles. How else could they sign treaties with Edward IV.... okay, less said about that the better :p