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EU4 - Development Diary - 2nd of July 2019

Hello all and welcome to today's dev diary for EUIV. Over the past eight dev diaries, our content design team @neondt , @Caligula Caesar and @Ofaloaf have been serving up a plethora of content that will be coming your way in the upcoming European Update and its accompanying expansion. There's certainly been plenty of it (and I'm told even more to come) but today I'm here to update you on the development plans for EUIV leading up to said expansion, and to tease the new mechanics to come.

As we laid out early on in the year, we intend to take our time with the upcoming European update. We have previously said that we aim to release said update late this year, but this is now being moved into 2020 for a variety of reasons, not least of all that we have many ambitions for this update, and want to give it the development time it deserves.

Unpleasant news for some, I've no doubt. I've been seeing comments along the line of wanting the expansion released as soon as possible from people excited about the content updates when we haven't even touched on the mechanical ones yet. While the expansion release is certainly a long time away, we believe that this is the best way to deliver the quality that EUIV deserves.

In the meantime, as this is an unprecedentedly long time between releases for the game, we will be releasing a free update to the game post-summer. This will be an update with the 64-bit support and bugfixes, but will not contain any of the things we've been discussing around the European Update. We'll have more details on this once the July holiday season is over.

Ah yes, July, the dreaded month where everything in Sweden shuts down, including game development studios. Devs are already entering vacation mode, so there won't be much news coming from us over the month, however I believe @neondt has threatened that he may make a few more small content Dev Diaries as he defies the Swedish Vacation Standards.

So what about after July? Well, as you've no doubt been aware, we have been focusing heavily on the content that's in our upcoming European release, but not so much the mechanics. Dev Diaries will start delving into said mechanics after the Summer Holidays and we have some meat to delve into there. In Dev Diaries of past, we have openly talked about design ambitions for Mercenaries and Estates, as well as our desires to “Make Catholicism and the Pope feel like a force to be reckoned with, rather than just another colour of Christianity and country”. We're going to dive into these and share what we've been doing to make these aspirations a reality.

Of course, I don't want to leave you for Summer with worlds alone, so here are three completely contextless screenshots from the development version of the game for all your speculative needs.

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Have a wonderful Summer everyone. Regular Dev Diaries shall return on Tuesday August 6th.
 
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Macro-builder for raised Armies, Mercenaries to hire, Condottieri to hire, Ships fleets built -- what's not to love! (Yes I am speculating beyond what's hinted...)

And I vote for keeping the quotes -- it adds historical and rivalry flavour ;-)
 
Macro-builder for raised Armies, Mercenaries to hire, Condottieri to hire, Ships fleets built -- what's not to love! (Yes I am speculating beyond what's hinted...)

And I vote for keeping the quotes -- it adds historical and rivalry flavour ;-)
It would be cool if there were quotes but then they'd need to put them in for every nation, or near every nation. That's a monumental ask.
 
Little suggestion for Mercenaries Companys. It will be nice that they wont be loyal all the time. Leader if he see that country is weak he can rebell. There could occure some new disaster too.
 
History has shown us that it is the English who think only of money while the French fight for honour ! Frenchbashing : By adding thinks like that in a game, people will change their opinion easely !
 
As we laid out early on in the year, we intend to take our time with the upcoming European update. We have previously said that we aim to release said update late this year, but this is now being moved into 2020 for a variety of reasons, not least of all that we have many ambitions for this update, and want to give it the development time it deserves.

Does that mean the Poland lan will not be played on that sweet european update? Bummer :(
 
Is it possible we can get insults you can write and customise. Or insults that are nation specific (For example if you insult the emperor it'l mention how they aren't holy, roman or an empire)
The merc system might be utterly broken for nations with good starting economies but I'm assuming you have a balance (relations playing a factor, force limit, cost etc.) otherwise I think it's better than it was
 
I am fine with waiting for the new expansion longer (hope the product will be really good), but I wonder what you mean by bug fixes in the free update after the summer. There are several really broken things (e.g. AI not fighting rebels, not converting provinces religion, not colonizing normally if GC DLC is on, etc). These are possibly not classified as bugs, but it would be really frustrating to have these problems for more than a year.
 
I don't want to sound like a dick, but honestly the only thing I want to see next expanded would be characters as a mechanic rather than just mana generators and bonus givers.

I know it's a lot of work and would need to be balanced heavily against other gameplay elements, but right now it's the only thing that would really peak my interest in EU4 again.

For me the recent dlc's have felt a bit.... uninspired.

Edit: that's not really fair, what I mean is that that game hasn't really evolved in a big way in quite some time. Probably missions and coal being my favourite additions in the last year.
I know what you expect. But such a radical transformation from a mana-based system to a more dynamic-based system would be impossible. EU4 has developed so much since its release and changing its core would almost mean abandoning most of its previous expansions. The works it takes will be also unimaginable. You can still expect such transformation happens in IR though as it's still quite new, but you may not expect it for EU4. Such change could only happen for EU5 but not an expansion of EU4. You can still have a more dynamic system in EU4 though by using mods like Meiou and Taxes.
 
Maybe give SE Asia's map a little touch up with all this extra time? That seemed to be the next dlc before the Golden Century fiasco.
 
As to the DLC delayed to 2020 - take your time and make it as great as CK2's Holy Fury, which was absolutely worth waiting for.
 
While I'm eager for the update, as an MP player I gotta ask: how many mercs can we expect to see? Certainly the mercspam is a bit out of hand, but if you nerf it too hard without compesating in manpower somehow, nobody will start player wars anymore as not having mercs will make them too weak. MP is already in danger of dying since developing is cheap enough now that people would often rather dev than fight (as wars take away money that could be used elsewhere, banked-up manpower in the form of professionalism, give devastation, and often cause loss of mana via bankruptcy).
 
I’m glad to hear that you’re taking your time on this DLC. In the extra months, I hope you revisit certain developments that have been met with community feedback, such as the ahistorical unification of Austria (which currently stands as an enormous missed opportunity for great gameplay and more interesting dynamics). Many good suggestions have been given. In that vein, I hope you take the tiny slice of time necessary to update Portugal’s ideas, making them worthy of the world’s first global empire.

Also, how will the new mercenary system work with Cradle of Civilization’s army professionalism mechanic?
 
I too am glad that the release is delayed for polishing. It is good news.

Of course if your campaign falls right in the middle of the content we changed/added for that free update you might want to restart.
I won't spoil what that content will be for now, though ;)
So no playing EU4 this july, got it! :p