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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 12th of July 2022

Hyvää päivää! Welcome to this week’s developer diary where I will be revealing two new mission trees: Finland and Lübeck! As a note ahead of time, the new Finland mission tree will be part of the upcoming DLC, while we decided to grant Emperor’s Lübeck tree to Hamburg and Bremen (with the appropriate tweaks, available for Emperor owners) and give Lübeck a brand new, expansive set of missions for the base game. However, more on that further down!

Please keep in mind that the numbers showcased here are NOT FINAL and are very much subject to change based on your feedback!

During the timeline of the game, Finland rested under the crown of Sweden and had some regional development in terms of its farming population. The Finnish cavalry known as the Hakkapeliita were famed for their ability to provide valuable skirmishers, reconnaissance, and devastating charges in campaigns against both Russia and Poland. However, as with the Teutonic Order, Gotland and Livonia, this set of missions revolves around a scenario in which Finland fought (and won) their independence, making them a valid contender for the Scandinavian crown and expanding their domain across several shores and regions.

Despite Finland’s status as a releasable tag, we felt it was appropriate to satisfy the demands for a proper and interesting Finnish mission tree:

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Finland will receive 15 new missions, each one carefully crafted to offer new and unique rewards, leading into the formation of Scandinavia and the domination of the Baltic shores. Please note that the art of the icons is placeholder and is not final!

Raise Our Army will give a short yet tactically crucial bonus to your forces, allowing you the ability to outmaneuver the numerically superior Swedes and their wartime allies:

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What’s more, you will gain access to a unique version of the Hakkapeliitta Cavalry which costs no Army Professionalism to recruit:

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The mission Defend Independence will require you to make allies, raise your stability and bring balance to your financial affairs by having no loans. As a reward, you will be able to write your own story, your saga, which will grant you a scaling reward based on your ruler’s achievements during his lifetime at the time of completing the mission. The factors for the reward are:
  • Stability (Administrative Accomplishment)
  • Number of Allies (Diplomatic Accomplishment)
  • The amount of development you’ve grown by (Military Accomplishment)

Each of these will grant our ruler between 1 and 3 monarch stats (or monarch points if already at 6), along with this powerful ruler-tied modifier as well as permanent claims on the Baltic Trade Node (that’s a surprise tool that we will use later):

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Completing the aforementioned mission will open the way for 3 new missions. First off, conquering Stockholm from your former overlords will change the name of Stockholm (if your culture is Finnish), grant it some development and give you access to a discounted advisor:
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Seize the Means will task you with seizing the means of production behind Europe’s prime source of copper and will grant you a good bit of ducats from your copper and iron production, the ‘Industrious’ trait (if your ruler has enough available slots) as well as the following reward:

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Expanding St. Olav’s Tower will yield quite an interesting and powerful local reward:

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Keep in mind that if for whatever reason an enemy force (another nation or rebels) takes control of the province, you will lose the above modifier!

Declaring a Baltic Empire will give you a new name and if you have Mandate of Heaven the following reward along with granting you the rank of Empire:

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On the right side of the tree you will see missions relating to the development of the countryside and the founding of new cities:

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Founding Turku, an important city for Finland guarding the way to and from Stockholm:

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Founding Helsinki will grant a level 2 Center of Trade as well as a few buildings for your newly developed province. Note that if you complete the mission with a Shipyard and a Dockyard, you will instead gain their upgraded versions:

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Finetuning the Finances of the realm will require you to increase your income, employ a level 2 Administrative Advisor, run a positive monthly balance and have no loans:

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The Turku Academy, your domain’s first university and institution of higher education, will yield the Scholar trait for your ruler, Innovativeness and more:

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The culmination of the Finnish tree ends with unleashing the White Death upon Europe and a powerful permanent country modifier to go with it:

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Of course, you are welcome to form Scandinavia and gain the Scandinavian mission tree, however Finland will not have a unique Scandinavian tree, as its senior siblings in the region do.



Now, 1.34 will also hone and improve as well as add new content for the base game. One such addition is an expanded mission tree for Lübeck. Before we delve into it, I would like to repeat that the Emperor DLC Lübeck tree will be available for Hamburg and Bremen (if you have the Emperor DLC) with a good number of tweaks and new rewards as well as localisation.
Moreover, the Hanseatic League will now be a formable nation with its own set of national ideas (essentially Lübeck with a different name and better ideas). Since that’s out of the way, let’s go, Lübeck!

From a historical perspective, Lübeck (and the Hansa as a whole) has seen better days. The 15th century brought a lot of decline for their merchants, with business shifting westwards towards the English channel. You are tasked with reviving the mercantilist grip of the League, expanding it and creating a trade Empire the likes of which the world has never seen. To assist you in your endeavors, the various missions of your tree also benefit the members of your trade league, giving you a reason to care for them and if possible, expand their ranks:

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The top half of the tree will focus on expanding the League outwards. However, many of these missions will not require direct conquest. You will be able to complete many of these via diplomacy as well! The goal is to give the player the freedom to choose how they want to approach the tree.

The conquest branch will start with requiring you to raise an army which will seamlessly grant claims for and flow into missions about Visby, Mecklenburg, Riga and more.

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Gateway to the East will require you to have Riga be part of the trade league and have high opinion of you or control the similarly named province as well as having a certain amount of troops.

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Restore Visby will lead you to restoring a historical stronghold for the League:

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visby event.png
Gaining ports in Danzig, cooperating with the Traders and developing the city of Danzig will grant the following benefits:


danzig event.png

The conquest path ends with the appointment of an official War Minister. Every different military advisor will grant a different, dynamic reward:


Screenshot_5.png

The second part of the tree is wholly dedicated to the internal affairs of both Lübeck itself and the Hansa as a general league of trade nations. Initially, you will have to expand the Old City of Lübeck and its market, yielding powerful Trade Efficiency and Institution Spread modifiers for a few years followed by the Peace of Vordingborg, imitating the styles of Italian Bookkeeping and Financing the Guilds of Lübeck:

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Of course, no Hansa playthrough would be complete without a mission to address and expand the Hansehalle, the legendary administrative center and the heart of the entire Hansa:

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Funding the shipbuilders’ Guild will grant a flavor event about the legendary Hanseatic Cog which will grant Light Ship Cost as well as Sailors and increased Naval Leader Maneuver. Elsewhere, Organize Hanseatic Diets will require you to bring peace within the Trade League and develop Diplomatic channels between yourself and potential members or subjects:

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Impose Lübeck Law will grant another dynamic reward, based on which faction is in power at the time of completion:

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Presenting a grown and powerful economy as well as increasing your total development in the Tend to the Towns mission will yield a positive bonus for you and your Trade League members:

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Developing the Mineral Trade in Europe has quite a spicy reward that will, just like its predecessors, change depending on the circumstances of its completion, here’s the direct and less likely outcome of importing large amounts of precious metals in your ports:

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To wrap up the flavor part of the tree, declaring the Queen of the Hansa mission will turn all members of your trade League into subjects and grant a diplomatic relations modifier to cover part of the upkeep costs for 30 years. Furthermore, you will gain monarch power scaled to the Development of your capital, 10 points per development to be precise:

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The event Crowning of a New Queen grants 2 different bonuses. Either you change your country’s name to The Hanseatic League and gain a new idea set or keep your current ideas while your ruler gains +1 adm/dip/mil and you gain 3 Mercantilism:

queen event.png

The new Hanseatic League national ideas:

FU2_ideas = { start = { trade_efficiency = 0.2 merchants = 1 } bonus = { trade_steering = 0.2 } trigger = { tag = HSA has_country_flag = hsa_proclaimed_queen_of_the_hansa_flag } free = yes FU2_foreign_kontors = { global_trade_power = 0.15 } FU2_the_handelsmarine = { global_ship_trade_power = 0.25 global_ship_cost = -0.05 } FU2_reform_queens_army = { discipline = 0.05 } FU2_adler_von_lubeck_legacy = { heavy_ship_power = 0.1 } FU2_merchants_with_state = { global_trade_goods_size_modifier = 0.1 development_cost = -0.05 } FU2_spread_the_northern_style = { idea_cost = -0.1 } regularised_contribution = { global_prov_trade_power_modifier = 0.20 } }


Earlier in this Developer Diary, I mentioned that the Emperor DLC Lübeck tree will be playable for Hamburg and Bremen, since Lübeck got a shiny new tree. To add to that, the Hanseatic League, which is the reward for the final flavor mission for Lübeck, is now available as a formable nation and will come outfitted with the Lübeck tree and the evolved idea set I showcased just above.

In the interest of time, this Developer Diary cannot be too large. Thus, we have intentionally omitted showcasing the rest of the flavor coming for Lübeck. This Diary barely covers 40% of the new content! As mentioned above, this Lübeck mission tree will be part of the **base game** and will come fitted with 36 new missions and 20 new events!

Lastly, I would like to bring another small change to your attention: the UI for Estates has been reworked and I would like to give special thanks to Artemis, whose UI work served as the basis for our own:
estate ui.png


Now passing the mic over to my dear friend and colleague @Ogele to talk about new shiny Theocratic Reforms!

Hello there!

In the last development diaries we have shown new government reforms for monarchies, republics and even pirate republics which will all be part of the 1.34 update. Today I want to finish this topic for good as I will present to you what we have in store for theocracies!
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Theocracies were the last on our list for new government reforms and had already a bunch of interesting and fun choices to pick from. As such, they don’t receive as many new reforms as for example monarchies and republics do. With that being said, we still think they deserve some love nonetheless and because of that we have decided to add 2 new theocracy specific tiers.

Tier 2:

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Note: Internal Mission, External Mission and Mission to Civilize are unchanged while Mission on the High Sea only requires one owned port instead of a capital port.

Tier 3:

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Education of the Theocrat will immediately trigger an event for you when picked which allows you to choose what stat bonus your next heir shall receive:

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This event will always trigger when you get a new ruler and fires before you can select an heir so your heir will benefit from the bonus you choose.

While we are at it: the Kingdom of God reform for the Papal State is still in the 3rd tier, but has received some buffs to make it more on par with theocracies which have access to the Papal Influence and Education of the Theocrat:

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Tier 5:

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Note: Only Subservient Bureaucrats and Zealous Administrators received changes

Tier 6:

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Note: Magister Militum Dei and Embrace Conciliarism are Papal State only

Tier 8:

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Note: only “Pursuit of Knowledge” is new here, the other reforms are former Tier 2 reforms which have been moved to Tier 8.

Tier 9:

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Governments which have the “Is a Monastic Order” government trait gain access to four additional reforms which are already part of the game right now.

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Tier 10:

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Tier 11:

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Tier 12:

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That was it for this week! Next week @Gnivom will talk about the AI changes and adjustments for 1.34. Until then, we wish you all a great week!
 
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The event Crowning of a New Queen grants 2 different bonuses. Either you change your country’s name to The Hanseatic League and gain a new idea set or keep your current ideas while your ruler gains +1 adm/dip/mil and you gain 3 Mercantilism:
Earlier in this Developer Diary, I mentioned that the Emperor DLC Lübeck tree will be playable for Hamburg and Bremen, since Lübeck got a shiny new tree. To add to that, the Hanseatic League, which is the reward for the final flavor mission for Lübeck, is now available as a formable nation and will come outfitted with the Lübeck tree and the evolved idea set I showcased just above.

Ayutthaya => Siam
Lübeck => Hanseatic League

Sames issues, same fights. It will be easier for a TAG that isn't Lübeck to form The Hanseatic league because it's locked behind a finisher mission in a long tree, despite Lübeck being the natural TAG to form it.
 
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Please make lubecks finisher be trade vassals that cost no relation slots like the Japanese ones. Its is and still will be a trap to players. Also it would be fun to have a differt play style. Or prehaps 3 relation slots per trade node with more than 50 percent power
 
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I think I should add that the current numbers of reform progress from Crownland has the following values:
View attachment 859385

The first one is from 50% Crownland to 59%.
Second one is from 60% to 69%.
Third one is from 70% to 79%.
Fourth one is from 80% to 99%.
And the last one is at 100% Crownland.

Do note that being under 30% Crownland will not penalize you with reduced Reform Progress Growth. Instead you still only have to deal with less global taxes.
We did also slighty adjust the "Crownland levels" so it is a smoother progression from +10% to +50% Reform Progress Growth.

It goes without saying that these numbers might get changed later, depending on the feedback.
Who will benefit from the 100% crownland modifier? As I've seen in any country, whenever you reach 99%CL aprox, you can't get above that because anytime you conquer a province, a bit of crownland is given to your estates. I suppose this only affects tall nations, right?
Also, regarding estates, AI hordes tend to seize crownland from the tribes anytime when possible, making them angry, when they shouldn't be doing that past the age of absolutism, because it is better to keep them loyal always
 
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For 1.35 we want to expand the government reforms further and add new tier 1 reforms for monarchies, republics and theocracies which suit to certain tags, regions or just in general.
Great, I hope they'll be interesting, I hoped that prussian theocracy would be just as enjoyable as the prussian monarchy and stratocratic republic, it would be a change from the normal Brandeburg into Prussia.
As for the heir stats, you don't see them because they are completely randomized in the script - they are not hidden per se.
Many people hate theocracies because of the fact that if you get a bad heir you can't disinherit him or you can't disinherit him so you'd be stuck with a Enrique-level heir for a very long time and be unable to remove him, maybe add the possibility to disinherit them at the expense of 20 devotion and -50 prestige, or maybe there could be an event about electing a pope that shows their stats which would make it better than a randomly generated ruler.
We might want to revisit theocracies in 1.35 though so maybe this can be changed.
Regarding the typos: I am on it. The descriptions were finished rather recently and didn't go through proofreading yet.
Good to know this.

I was also referring to the last tribal reform that makes you switch government type into a theocracy because it finishes with "Just and" instead of having a full description like the republic, monarchy or steppe nomad reforms.

Edit:add a parliament with nobles and the one without it, it's ironic how England was made into a parliamentary monarchy by the nobles yet they don't exist as an estate, it's similar to the Sejm but nobles weren't as free as in Poland, maybe it could be the same for other countries, i hate giving up the nobility for their amazing integration policy to just get the -3 diplo rep debuff which would be slower than the parliamentary issue for faster integration, it would also put me in danger due to low diplomatic reputation, maybe add to the tier related to the nobles the possibility to remove them

I enjoyed the parliament but I wanted to make it less problematic and better, the diet isn't an issue by the time the age of Absolutism comes out.
 
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Hrm. I'll admit to not optimizing my play, but is +1 building slot for 30 years actually any good? To benefit, you need to fill all your slots, then build the new building. Does it go away when the modifier does, or do you keep it?
 
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I am glad to see my favorite Hansestad Hamburg get access to the old Hansa mission tree, even if it is only because Lübeck gets one that is better now. The mission tree is pretty bad if you don't have Mare Nostrum iirc, but it is definitely better than nothing.

The Theocracy reforms look nice i guess, but they barely address the elephant in the room when it comes to theocracies: The non-existent control over heir stats. I know that is the reason I never want to play them, and I'm under the impression that that is a pretty common sentiment.
 
Looking forward to this DLC more and more every week! :)

Any chance for Nidarosdomen to be included as a great project since you appear to be making the St. Olavs Tower as a great project in Finland? Nidarosdomen is after all closely connected to St. Olav burial place and would fit better as a Norwegian great project than Heddal Stave Church (however cool that one also is). I'm not against having two great projects in Norway of course, but I'm biased.
 
Is Karelia releasable or is it still only a revolter tag. (personally I dislike the fact that there are so many unreleasable revolter tags with no cores and a lot of cores disappear 50 years into the game as a leftover from EU3 to begin with, I should be able to release Aquilea in 1820 or release Sapmi without a nationalist revolt darnit)
 
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Hi,

is there is a chance DEV team will go back to the great idea to add some Absolutism bonuses in early government reforms.

In fist proposal, there were added bonuses for Absolutism in tier 2 - 5 , monarchy government reform, but someone criticized it is too early and DEV team back down. I think DEV team had great idea with those bonuses added to those reforms. I understand that modifiers are useless for 200 years, but (1) so what, estates have those modifiers from day one, (2) adding Absolutism modifiers to government reforms (both + and - Absolutism) encourage player to look at enacted reforms after a century and reevaluate made choices and maybe reform a country, not just set once at the beginning and just go to the next reform and next and next till he/she run out of reforms.

For example, in 1450 maybe I would not go for curtail privileges, but in age at Absolutism I would start to consolidate power and change my government to more centralized and switched to curtail privileges reform for its Absolutism bonus, to do that I would have to give up some reform progress and possibility to increase government capacity to reform my monarchy (maybe switching few tiers back should cost more to make it more challenging and maybe changing to reform providing "+" Absolutism modifiers in Age of Absolutism should cause some revolts or unrest to make it even more challenging. For me having reason to go back to government reforms and change them because situation changes would give me more statisfaction and fun from mechanic, especially if it comes with price so the game is more challenging in 1700+
I agree wholeheartedly on this. The meta shakeup from all the new reforms having +/- absolutism was a beautiful thing, it would give tall nations more flat bonuses and also give absolutist minmaxing many more annoying penalties to help balance out the absurd amount of land you can grab at once per war.

I hope that not only the tradeoffs in absolutism come back, but that most of the other gov reforms get tradeoffs of that sort added too.
 
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Next time anyone ask for norse revival let me remind you that one of the biggest religions in the world today and also dominant china in in game time frame, taoism/shenism, is not in game, instead there is weird non-religion confucianism
I mean to be fair while Scandanavia was Christianized in the 11th-12th Centuries, Greenland was settled before that, so having the lost colony be Norse couldn't be all that bad, could it?

I do agree that other more significant religions are outright missing though. The only reason there is such hubbub over old norse is that its already in the game via customs as an option and thus would require basically zero new effort for the devs to make it "naturally" appear outside of customs or RNW.
 
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1. Byzantium - Their missions are mostly claim that conquer that. I think you would agree that they definitely deserve some rework. Also perhaps lowering the requirement to restore the Roman empire. I encountered thread suggesting that borders under Basil 2 be requirement. Also opinion of other players could be taken via poll.
PDX Big Boss's Flavor Universalis mod already does this very well. Byz has an 80-something mission tree.

Ottomans for comparison get a 101-mission tree in the same mod.

Honestly, just porting over the bulk of those would give both far more depth than can possibly be imagined.
 
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I disagree with the idea that small country = needs lots of buffs.

I'm fine with giving bonuses to small or fun tags for the sake of alt-history runs, but I generally think such bonuses should be either moderate in scope or temporary. The Finland admin advisor buff I criticized is both permanent and affects the entire country, which means it persists and scales far beyond the point where Finland is a small power in need of such a bonus.

A temporary version of that bonus or something limited in its geographic scope - a province-level effect, or one tied to a particular culture, trade node, or region, for example - would be a better fit because Finland would grow out of it over time. If Finland becomes a great power it, by definition, would no longer "need the help."
If it was something like goods produced or admin efficiency I’d agree with you, but it’s tax modifier, the weakest economic modifier in the game
 
You haven´t show us us all new focus for Lübeck but i am worried that the pernament modifications are gone.. like the Krantor with the +10% Trade Efficiency

Still there pernament modifications?
 
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So what you are saying is, the modifier for relations upkeep should be permanent ? :cool:

While this is probably the easiest solution (it would probably be a mess to make a change to the AI to give them a HUGE opinion buff to staying in the trade league and never going to war with you without creating exploitable loopholes), you should probably also add something to buff the members who are now vassalized as many of them were likely free cities who are forced to give up that buff to their economy and thus your income.
 
PDX Big Boss's Flavor Universalis mod already does this very well. Byz has an 80-something mission tree.

Ottomans for comparison get a 101-mission tree in the same mod.

Honestly, just porting over the bulk of those would give both far more depth than can possibly be imagined.
80% true, but the one thing I didn't like of the Flavour Universalis mod was forcing Byzantium to have a lot of debuffs that ultimately feels like a massive admin tax in raising stability. I felt like Byzantium's starting position is precarious enough compared to Mali or Majapahit or Khmer that it didn't need another restriction. Also that I checked the mission tree for how to preclude the pseudo-disaster and went about acting on those assumptions, only to discover that the requirements for the mission changed on me once the disaster fired. Maybe 1.34's clearer tooltips could help avoid getting tripped up like that.
 
Those are amazing content! I genuinely can't wait. Tho I have two questions:
Does the name change for Finland stays same after forming scandinivia?
Is finland formable now? Just a personal thing but it feels "gamey" to play as a releasable tag, it'd be awesome if you could form finland like bulgaria
 
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