EU4 - Development Diary - 7th of September 2021

[Ogele]

Hello there!

After the summer break, I am honored to present what the new content will be about!

But first, let me introduce myself as it is my very first time to write in the official forums instead of just lurking here.
I am Ogele, a content designer from Germany, who joined around the time of the release of Leviathan, and as such I got directly thrown into a lot of script bug fixing. Prior to joining, I was (and still am) a modder for EU4 - the one or other might know me already as Comrade Flan on Steam. Oh, and if somebody wants to complain about the bugfix of Fars' color: that was me - so to all the fans of Yellow Fars, I am sorry for your loss.

With that said, it's time to move to the actually exciting new stuff for the new Content Pack which will be focusing on Sub-Saharan Africa.

Today I start with the presentation of one of the famous realms of Africa - Mali

Before diving into the mission tree I want to say that this is all still work in progress. As such, everything still is subject to change.

Mali is a realm which has outlived its time of glory, and is spiraling into irrelevance during the timeframe of EU4. Starting prior to 1444 with the death of Mansa Suleyman Keita, the brother of the famous Mansa Musa, Mali has been facing civil wars and poor leadership. As such, Mali has not a good time starting in the game as they will have to face the Disaster Decline of Mali.

Icon and event picture are not final.

While the modifiers themselves are not the end of the world, Mali will have to face a series of events:

There are a few more disaster related events, but I think these will suffice.

Now the question is: how do you end this disaster? Well, the mission tree has the solution

The mission tree is split into three parts: Reconquest of your former borders, dealing with the Disaster and a little bit of colonization. The most right side of the tree is the one you will focus the most in the early game as its rewards remove some of the disaster events, making the Decline much more bearable. They will remove the Pretender rebels spawning on every new monarch, make the estates loyal for your cause and remove the estate rebellions and will finally ensure that provinces, which are core of other nations, remain loyal to you instead of revolting. At the same time, the missions in the middle part will push you into conquering former territory back, giving permanent claims over Macina, Jenné, Timbuktu and Songhai. An additional bonus of the missions is that each conquest of a new territory will grant you +1 Stability as long you have the disaster active. Also, while you conquer after your heart's desire you will fire these events through the mission tree:

With the Restore the Empire mission you can finally retake your status as an Empire, and if you also finish the mission Handle the Kaabu you can finally put an end to the Decline as you have clearly proven that Mali has recovered from the disaster. Restore Mali Authority will end the disaster and gives you -15% Stability cost and -0.05 Monthly Autonomy. After dealing with the disaster, it is time to step into Mansa Musa's footsteps and try to outperform his generosity. But first you will need to get the income for that, and because of that the missions following handling the inner troubles will focus on developing the main sources of income, which are Gold and Ivory. Completing the mission Gold and Ivory will allow you to use a brand new estate privilege and will fire an event, which is beneficial for every owner of ivory provinces:

Now that the gold question has been solved you can now relive the history and make a pilgrimage to Mecca. By ensuring that the owners of Ankara, Kairo and Mecca have the "Sent Gift" opinion modifier, you can complete the mission Show Generosity and get an event which allows you to invest into Mecca, either adding a Great Mosque and making your own Ulema happy or adding a Counting House and making your own Dhimmi happy.

Finally, it wouldn't be a Mansa Musa experience if you don't crash the economy of a whole country. With the final mission Dominate Europe's Trade, which requires you to have a strong trade presence in either of the European trade nodes and having 15,000 Ducats without any loan will, you can unleash the sheer amount of gold you have hoarded upon Europe!

If you wonder what the result will look like... well... here you go. Poor Genoa will never financially recover from this

​

While I am at it: I want to point out that this effect is still in balancing phase, and that it has only 10% of the effect for player countries and their subjects. While I like to add rewards which make you feel good, I don't want them to be an auto-win against other players. Of course you can argue that it is an auto-win against the AI, but it must be considered that you have to be a economical behemoth already to get this mission done. Also, it is very satisfying to see the pop-ups coming over the year of AI trade countries declaring bankruptcy.

Now to some other smaller highlights for Mali:

• The colonization missions are based on the legend of Abu Bakr. Because we didn't find many evidences for the existence of his journey to the new world, these missions will describe him more as a legend then as a discrete fact. The missions will revolve about travelling west and founding an own colony in South America
• The mission Connection to Maghreb enables a decision which allows you to purchase a province in Europe for 2000 Ducats. You have a choice of 5 provinces here, which are all near Italy or Iberia
• The mission Choose Direction will enable a mission which is either focused on converting your land or on tolerating the traditions

That's all for today! There are a lot more things I would love to talk about, but I think I am stretching that dev diary more than enough already. With that said, next week we will take a closer look at Songhai. Until then, have a nice week!

 

[Johan]

Can you confirm whether there will be any map changes at this time? Also what the scope of the content pack will be. Just West Africa/Guinea or everything south of the Sahara.

We are not planning at changing the map more in EU4's lifecycle. I am tired of people's savegames being broken.

 

[Johan]

Glad to see some African content, hope we can get some more regional missions so even small tags have mission trees. And of course the prominent nations (Ethiopia and Kongo come to mind) should have unique missions. I'm glad Mali is getting some flavor but shutting down european gold mines seems really over the top and indicative of power creep. For a gold-dependent country, why not just give them something like -0.10 inflation from national ideas and then another 0.05 permanent modifier from its missions, and/or giving it halved depletion chance instead of none.

Our plan is several regional missiontrees and a fair bit of unique ones.

 

[Ogele]

Will the Cape of the hope region remain uncolonized?

For now at least, yes. But I have some plans for the region, just need some testing and time to implement them first though.

oh wow! So we're in africa now. Thats nice!

I like that there are a lot of events - hope there are more. Does the owner of mekka get an event about the mali event? This 2 country events really opens the flavor for me as a player as it makes the world more alive when i play as a country controlling mekka and get an event about mali.

Are there events regarding the Marroko or european neigbours? I guess there are so many possiblities to feel it with more flavor.
Good job!

The owner of Mecca will get an event of the Mansa visiting them, yes. For Morocco and European neighbors, there are no events. Yet.

Production eff doesnt apply to gold mines.......

Oh my, my bad. It should Goods Produced. Thanks for the reminder!

Change it to goods produced. As gentleman above mentioned prod eff does nothing there.

Gotcha!

Crashing the economy of a whole continent sounds fun! Just one question, how is "a European country" defined? Capital on the European continent, or by tech group?

It will check for the capital and if it is in Europe.

That makes sense. I respect the total gear shift to focusing on bugs and not breaking peoples' games. Will future content packs as the game's life cycle is being wrapped up still feature releasable or formable tags?

Formable tags will be included.

 

[Johan]

With the state the game is in after Leviathan, shouldnt rebalancing all those mechanics, fixing the bugs, filling out the missing content, pacifying the community and establishing a road map, etc, etc, etc... be more urgent than a content pack?

yes. and the team is fixing the bugs.

 

[Pavía]

Hello everyone, back from summertime! I'll be addressing some of your concerns, although I'm 100% with what @Mordred Viking already said, and @Ogele will probably answer some other questions about the mission tree on the next few days.

Is this content pack free? Is solving the disaster going to be locked behind a paid DLC mission tree like in Leviathan?

We will be delivering a big bugfixing and balancing patch in the next version of the game. As Johan already stated, we won't add more new features until we're OK with the state of the game. The new paid content is, then, standalone, as we want to add more flavor to Sub-Saharan Africa, but trying not to affect the core systems of the game until we're OK with the fixing on them.

I mean obviously being rude isn't warranted, but I think people have genuine issues with this company since they keep saying they listen to their players and want to improve the quality of patches but we just don't see that actually happening. And saying there won't be any new provinces is pretty big, since most of the new provinces added in previous patches were high quality and justified and imo was the best thing about both Emperor and Leviathan.

A lot of my friends have quit eu4 lately because of how the latest patches have went, and a lot more will probably quit in the future too if there aren't changes in how paradox releases patches and the quality of them. If people are left with a bad taste from eu4 they are far less likely to purchase other paradox games like vicky 3 as well.

Are people REALLY complaining about that or about bugs and OP game breaking features like concentrating dev? Even merging few provinces in NA and adding some to scandinavia will be much better decision. I am sure most players will handle this last suffering with broken saves if they know why.

We're actually reading and listening to the community, and trying to address all the issues commented. We'll disclose some of the fixes done for the next patch in the next few weeks, as those on Concentrate Development (which, again, Johan already mentioned). Just stay tuned, and keep on with suggestions and bug reporting on your behalf.

Now i agree with the sentiment that some wording here are too harsh, but this part, this part here is just straight up dishonest. For the last years we were presented unchangeable facts in dev diaries. Only questions were answered, concerns never adressed in the same diary. Only when one issue persists through 4-5 diaries we get a "it is too late to change now" comment. The ONLY time in the last years where balance numbers were adressed after community outrage that happened before a release and not in a later patch was the whole desaster where we were presented with intentionally absurd numbers just to manifacture the feeling that we are heard (the evidence of devs admitting to that is still on this forum afaik).

Dev diaries pre release are only here for marketing reasons. Period. You did not listen so far. Community feedback was never implemented before releasing the update since at least rule britannia.

Now either you did a full 180 on your policy after leviathan, which would be appropriate, or you are being intentionally dishonest here.

We're reading feedback, and we'll continue doing that in the next few weeks. As an example, we took into account the community when adding new monuments in 1.31.5, including number balancing for them. And we'll take into account the feedback you gave to us in this DD, and in the following ones regarding new missions trees. Although it's true that a bit less harsh wording would be very welcome.

That is the reason why this game is always bugged and needs 5 patches to be playable after DLC. Developers don't know their game and how to play in it. Leviathan was complete ruin and PE debuff for Gold is just a proof of that you don't play it at all. I think you need Quality Manager or Beta Testers instead of testing DLCs on final client.

We play the game each week to test things and find bugs and issues, both in SP and MP, and even some of us do that in our free time. We're also supported by a QA team, that also play and know the game as well as us. But you've got to take into account that: a) People does mistakes. b) This is early access content, so it's in need of further reviewing and balancing. In this case, about the Production Efficiency/Goods Produced for Gold, it's easy to forget it when you're scripting so much different things. What goes on then is further testing, and QA assistance, so this can be fixed in time. Then, take this kind of things as an opportunity to help us devs with what we're working on, and to try to improve the new content.

 

[Ogele]

Do you still have the code for the old Mali mission tree reward? Maybe it would be fun for modders to try out the original mission.

The mission itself is gone. The event however is still in the script - just unused and inaccessible without console commands.