Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 20th of June 2023 - 1.35.4 release & History Lessons DLC

[grotaclas]

i still dont see "expand empire" cb even though i restarted the game twice and used console commands to reach 3rd reform as Austria

It works for me. Did you wait a month tick after completing the third reform? Then you should have it against Bologna and East Frisia (if you started in 1444 and they didn't join yet)

 

[iClipse]

Intriguing. Not sure how this works though. So we have new songs integrated that are texts instead of music and play when we're playing in China/Japan only?

 

[Pavía]

Will there be transcripts posted for these eventually? I would not mind subtitles in-game, but I am not sure how practical that would be without getting in the way of gameplay. I am deaf so, unfortunately, I will be missing out on this.

If anyone can recommend an app for voice-to-text transcription, that would also be great.

We thought about making transcripts for the Lessons, although we didn't go with them for the release, as it had a few technical issues related to its positioning in the UI, etc. But as improving the accessibility of our games is one of our UX objectives, I'll pass this feedback to the Team, so we investigate if we can add this to the Lessons at some point.

This is a very interesting idea and I really like it in principle. I don't know how it will feel to listen to a podcast while playing the game though. I imagine it may be a bit difficult to listen to someone speaking while reading events. A "pause music" hotkey might be useful.

Adding to our list of suggestions to improve the experience.

This DLC is only in English or I can listen it in Spanish?

At this moment yes, we might think in the future about translating to the other languages that we support in the game, although it's a bit early to decide about it, as it's the first time that we release this type of DLC, and we have to test how it's received.

In-game "History Lessons" is an interesting idea, but I think it'll need some significant changes to the in-game music player to be truly useful.

For example:

• Keyboard shortcut to pause/unpause (suggested by @Utik)
• Some way to automatically restart the podcast at the same place you left off last time you quit the game.
  • Or maybe it should be ~30s prior to the point you reached when you last quit? But this could quickly get annoying if you're loading up the game multiple times to test something.
• Ability to "seek" within each track.
  • If I get wrapped up in something in-game and realise I haven't been listening for the past couple of minutes, I want to be able to rewind. I can do this with external sources, but not with the in-game music player (you have to start over from the beginning).
  • If I quit the game partway through a podcast and the auto-restart feature mentioned above bugs out for some reason, I want to be able to manually choose my own starting point. (Errors of this kind are relatively frequent on dedicated platforms, so I imagine they'll be extremely frequent in a platform that's not primarily about podcasts, eg. EU4.)

I'm adding these suggestions to our list of possible improvements.

Intriguing. Not sure how this works though. So we have new songs integrated that are texts instead of music and play when we're playing in China/Japan only?

They play as other songs in the game, with the music player, and you can listen with whichever country you're playing with; although it probably makes the most sense to listen while playing with a Chinese or Japanese country, that's up to you.

 

[AngelRay]

Do we have something to do to get the dlc?

 

[grotaclas]

Do we have something to do to get the dlc?

You have to buy it them: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2412251/Europa_Universalis_IV_Japan_History_Lessons/

Europa Universalis IV: China History Lessons on Steam

Learn more about Ming China, the early Qing dynasty and the surrounding nations in this package of lectures from Laszlo Montgomery, host of the popular China History podcast.

store.steampowered.com

 

[Brynjar]

If I want to listen to a history podcast while playing (which I sometimes do, with the in game music still playing at my preferred low volume) I very much prefer to use services developed to give a decent podcasting experience rather than having to rely on an in game feature for it. That way I can even continue to listen uninterrupted even if I change my mind about what game I want to play, or if I choose to go make dinner instead of playing a game. Sure, I could play the tracks with an external audio player instead, but that still kind of defeats the whole point of a podcast.

If Paradox were to start making history podcasts related to their games that were intended to primarily be enjoyed from outside the game I would welcome the initiative, but as a DLC I'm not interested at all.

 

[bokorthedust]

Can't wait to see 'psychological horror' tagged on these too.

Jokes aside, I don't think it'll perform well. As others, I don't see myself either listening to this while playing a game, and once outside the game, there's a myriad of sources I can get this type of content if I want to. Hard pass on my part.

 

[Elfryc]

Will there be transcripts posted for these eventually? I would not mind subtitles in-game, but I am not sure how practical that would be without getting in the way of gameplay. I am deaf so, unfortunately, I will be missing out on this.

If anyone can recommend an app for voice-to-text transcription, that would also be great.

I've done that, using Notta. I chose the "one month, €13.99" option. A few things that may be important:

1) for this price, you've got enough time/words for both DLCs. I'd suggest proceeding them both in the same time, to avoid having to pay actually pay twice €13.99 added to the DLCs price.
I just looked in my account on Notta: my month is ended now, but I still have access to the text transcriptions. So, clearly, just throwing the files in Notta, leaving the website do the work and coming back later to export is probably the best option, both for time and cost reasons.
Arf, also: there's an export button in Notta. I didn't saw it for quite some time, thinking I had to actually copy and paste. Just exporting in .txt if much easier, saving the .txt file, copy/pasting in Word/OpenOffice if you want to.


2) The result is not perfect, for a number of reasons:

• Sometime the podcaster may have a slipping tongue or some words are pronounced the same ("heel"/"heal" for instance).
• There are some times also when the Asian names are hardly recognizable when compared to their spelling in English. I don't speak Chinese myself, but I remember in Chinese History some historical character name being pronounced something like "Ching Changchong" and bieng actually spelled something like "Zhing Shanyong"... Well, you get it. A short search on Wikipedia should bypass such a trouble though, going from link to link until reaching the guy you're looking for.

3) There are 2 versions of the tracks: in the "music" and "soundtrack" subfolders of dlc/dlc125_lessons_japan and dlc126_lessons_china folders.
I've used the "music" tracks in Notta, as the files are heavier, but I don't have any clue if this helps with the "sound resolution" (or whatever this is called) helping for a better text transcription.


4) Lastly: I'd suggest putting everything in a Word/Open Office file if you want to keep the content and correct issues as you read them.
The 2 DLCs are nearly 50K and 40K words -- basically you've got quite a book (a total of 180 pages for both DLCs, says Google, although I'm not sure if that's reliable of not).
EDIT: actually, that's a bit less than Tolkien's The Hobbit length (95K words).

 

[MrSnert]

Wow, it all makes sense now: the copy-pasted flavour/event texts from wikipedia; if you actually want to get some interesting historical information in your historical simulator you gotta pay up!

 

[Elfryc]

Wow, it all makes sense now: the copy-pasted flavour/event texts from wikipedia; if you actually want to get some interesting historical information in your historical simulator you gotta pay up!

If that's a reaction to my previous post, that's absolutely not what I meant.

What I meant, to be clear, is that Wikipedia is the easier way to get the spelling of a name that you just don't understand when hearing it pronounced the native way. What I heard as "Ching Chongchang" because not speaking Chinese was not that at all.
However, by finding a Wikipedia page related to this historical character, this allows you to find how the name is spelt.

 

[currylambchop]

Please add history lesson for HRE

 

[MrSnert]

If that's a reaction to my previous post, that's absolutely not what I meant

It wasn't... clearly.

 

[iClipse]

I'm on the fence on this one. I usually buy most stuff EU4 related, but I'm not entirely looking forward to the prospect of having to listen to the part about Tokugawa (for example) for the 4th time because the Audioplayer decides to play that, while not having heard the other 75% yet. You also can't really save where your left in the audio. So you'll often be fidgeting with your audioplayer.

I like the concept though. Learning about history while playing alternate history. Seems fun.

 

[Szabtom]

Fantastic idea! I listen to podcasts during game anyway, and plan to play a Ming game soon.

 

[Elfryc]

It wasn't... clearly.

It wasn't clear. At all. But if you say so I leave that aside.

 

[Alqamar]

Greetings, and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Dev Diary!

Today patch 1.35.4 was released, and with it we’re fixing most of the issues reported by the community after the launch of EUIV: Domination, including the most pressing ones that were already covered in the Roadmap DD, making more than 170 fixes. We hope that it improves the overall state of the game as per the feedback that we’ve received during the past week. For any further issues that are found while playing, please use the Bug Reports subforum to report bugs and the Changelog post for any questions or comments regarding the patch.

Along with the 1.35.4 patch we’re also releasing a new type of DLC, Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons, covering two countries for this release, China and Japan. Let me explain a bit about what this is about, and why we are releasing this DLC now.

This project started around one year ago, its objective being to add some more immersion to EUIV while playing it, in the format of a podcast. After some design discussions and planning, the Team decided to create a new type of Music DLC - but instead of listening to new songs in the in-game audio player, the tracks will be composed of lessons about the history of a certain country, similar to podcasts’ episodes. To prepare for this release, we made changes in the Audio player that were already released with the 1.35 update - so, these new DLCs work pretty much the same as any other Music Pack, so they shouldn’t impact the stability of the 1.35.4 patch. And why did we decide to release the DLCs now, and not with 1.35? Basically, to dedicate most of our resources to the release of 1.35 and Domination, and to make sure that the release of the History Lessons was also done with the quality we wanted for them, so problems in one of the releases wouldn’t impact much on the other.

Taking into account the new content that we were aiming to create for EUIV: Domination, we decided to start with two of the countries in East Asia most attractive for our players, China and Japan, which also have a rich and engaging History in the time frame of 1444-1820. We were lucky enough to count for the project with two experienced podcasters, Laszlo Montgomery from ‘The China History Podcast’, and Isaac Meyer from ‘The History of Japan Podcast’. Along with the Team, they prepared and recorded the episodes, 26 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - China, and 35 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - Japan.

In the case of China, you will find out a lot of interesting contextual information about the Ming and Qing dynasties, how the Mandate of Heaven was handled, and the relationships between China and its neighbors. Meanwhile, the context for Japan is more focused on the different Daimyos that are present in EUIV in 1444, and the start, development and ending of the Sengoku Jidai, the civil wars that spread out in the country during the 15th and 16th centuries, and that finished with the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

We hope that you enjoy this new type of content as much as we’ve done while preparing it, specifically, those who love History as much as the members of the Team and I do. And speaking of me, I was also invited to record two special episodes of Laszlo’s and Isaac’s podcasts which will go live this week, in which we discuss how we worked on the project, and why is so interesting for us the historical context of Europa Universalis IV, and thus this project itself!

I also hope that you all have fun with the 1.35.4 patch of EUIV as well! Next week we will have the last DD before the summer break, in which I’ll make a retrospective of Domination, and talk a bit about the roadmap for the following months. Cheers, bye!

I love the release of these "History Lessons" DLCs. However, I wonder:
1) Is it planned to release them in Spanish?
2) If so, can I apply anywhere to work on them, either as a translator or a reader?

 

[vvvasi]

I'm on the fence on this one. I usually buy most stuff EU4 related, but I'm not entirely looking forward to the prospect of having to listen to the part about Tokugawa (for example) for the 4th time because the Audioplayer decides to play that, while not having heard the other 75% yet. You also can't really save where your left in the audio. So you'll often be fidgeting with your audioplayer.

I like the concept though. Learning about history while playing alternate history. Seems fun.

While you're correct about not being able to save where you've left off in the audio, you can still select specifically which lessons you'd like to listen to - so (per your example) you'd at least be able to remove that one Tokugawa episode from the queue:

(and yes, there's a strange thrill in listening to the lessons while actively contradicting them!)

 

[Basileus2]

Oh man, I love the idea of putting podcasts into the game music player. I really hope this idea is replicated across all the PDX titles.

 

[Jarvin]

In EU7 we'll get an AI-driven auto podcast generation based on the actual events happening in your campaign

 

[Elfryc]

In EU7 we'll get an AI-driven auto podcast generation based on the actual events happening in your campaign

In theory this is actually possible right now, if I'm not wrong.
EU4 chronicles + Stellaris text-to-speech, you're very close of that.