Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 21st of February 2023 - Spain

[Pavía]

It must be nice being able to gamify your country's Golden Age!

P.S. This diary hasn't been added to the Featured Content yet. Is that intentional?

It appears to me as Featured Content, both in EUIV and General Forums...?

 

[Pavía]

This is amazing stuff. Will we also see any changes to Granada and Andalusia in this DLC?

Cool! Would love to see some changes to granada and andalusia too!

One question i have @Pavía , will you be adding new missions for Granada/Andalucia as well? Reason, with all the new modifiers Aragon and Castille are geting it would almost be imposible to counter them. Also since new Holy Orders are coming for Catholic Iberians what about Muslim Iberians?

And lastly one suggestion for Jerusalem/Crusader states. Would it be possible to add Holly Orders for them or at least if Jerusalem is formed?

Granada and Andalusia fell out of the scope of this DLC and update, unfortunately, although we'd love to add some more content for them in the future.

Are there any plans for making a new mission tree for the USA? I know they aren't a starter nation, but I still think they deserve more flavour than 4 unique missions.
Same goes for Brazil, Mexico and colonies in general. Maybe, like, add a generic MT for colonies that leads to independence and then have a unique one or two for the big ones. Just giving ideas...

As I say in the DD, America also fell out of the scope of this DLC, although it's on our radar of the regions lacking some more content.

The patchname is going to be BluePortugalAndPrussia, isn't it

Revealed!

I think people were asking for Prussia to get Prussian Blue, not Portugal. I know that both start with letter "P", but still

Prussian Blue for Portugal, and Portuguese Blue for Prussia.

Looking good, though some numbers may need to be revisited lol, I trust you guys to know which ones are really ridiculous.

Yeah, numbers usually come in a rough first draft, which is later adjusted after various rounds of testing, and also feedback from the Team's playtime and from our Beta Testers.

Will Navarra get some love too? IMO they should have a core on Vizcaya, with the ability to diplomatically reclaim it like Serbia can on their cores that Hungary holds. Some more missions, and a reworked idea set would be nice too. Some potential rewards could include getting some free light ships when you acquire Vizcaya, a centre of trade, some "tall" bonuses (dev cost, goods produced, tax, manpower, fort defense) to the core Basque provinces that let you concentrate a lot of power in the north.

Make Navarran ideas less crummy

I was in Basque country recently and as any EU4 player does when they go somewhere, got an itch to play a relevant nation. Since it has an achievement too, I figured I'd give Navarra a spin. I had glanced over their idea set before but looking at...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Here's some suggestions where I think the most important part is changing its traditions so they're actually useable as a landlocked nation, and getting at least one military idea (ideally 10% morale) so it can at least somewhat compete with Castille/Spain and France.

Navarra is going to receive some love, that we designed along @Aldaron , although not as much as we would have liked, TBH.

Thank you for the Blue Portugal!

But would you please explain why "Spanish inquisition" is still a Castilian NI and Not actually a Spanish one?

I mean, "Debvout Catholicism/Christianity" was really better suited for Castille.

Wow. A new Spanish playthrough will be required. Looking good, overall! A lot of buffs to an already super powerful nation (other than the starting disaster).

Regarding Spain's ideas. I kind of like the +1 artillery fire, but it's on top of +15% Morale and 5% discipline as well as Tercio's. All together it's one hell of a strong ideaset with regards to military. Maybe keep its somewhat unique artillery fire, but nerf them somewhere else?

One thing I never understood, is why this:
View attachment 949389

is part of Castile's idea set, but not of Spain. I feel like if there's a Catholic nation that could use that idea, it's Spain itself, no?

I also feel like Spain should somewhat decline by the endgame? Maybe something related to inflation?

We'll give a second thought to the 'Devout Catholicism' and 'Spanish Inquisition' tweak, thanks for the feedback.

A lot looks great here!! Two things - why is an ahistorical mission to colonize Africa needed to complete a historical Philippine colonization mission? Another is is anything being done to slow down the turbo-colonization? As it stands, even playing the Iberian nations turns into a mad dash to never spend anything but to get that first coloniztion before the other screws up the mission tree, shuts out later colonizers and even triggers premature Golden Ages as spread of knowledge of the Americas becomes that third objective.

It was already in Golden Century's mission tree, and we have tried not to take out content from that previous DLC; the only exception to that is the mission 'Expel the Moriscos', because the game flow required it, and could be covered by an event (as prior to 1.29).

Given that the entire world uses the same ships in-game it feels odd to have ones that are only for a few select countries. Maybe the ability to build them could (also) be tied to Maritime and/or Naval ideas or a generic government reform?

Also, how do these ships interact with the ability to sieze ships through combat?

Might be a thing in the future, but at this moment, we're exploring this new type of Special Unit on this way.

Was there a rework for the event chain that deals with conversion of Granada and Las Alpujarras war, particularly with the "Fate of the Kingdom of Granada"?

Also, was anything done to the "Plus Ultra" mission and conflicting colonization of Western Canary Isles by Portugal instead of Castille?

We have made some rework of that event chain, yes. For 'Plus Ultra', we added a small 50 Dip Power boost, and we're also aiming to tackle the Western Canary issue, although the final solution is not yet in place.

If we form Spain starting as neither Castile or Aragon, what missions do we get?

Castilian Spain, which is kinda 'Base Spain'.

Is there any plan to tie the Iberian Wedding to the Castilian Civil War disaster? The outcomes for player Castile should be union with Portugal (chose Joanna la Beltraneja and won), union with Aragon (chose Isabella and won), no union (unusual outcome / won with alternative rewards), or become a junior partner of Aragon or Portugal (sided with Joanna/Isabel and lost the civil war). For player Portugal and Aragon, the player should have to intervene in the Castilian civil war to get a union over Castile.

I like a lot of what I see here at first impression, especially the council of war portrait and the holy order icons.

We had early plans to create a third disaster, related to the Castilian War of Succession, although we discarded the idea, as it felt like a bit too much. We have to polish a bit the links between the early content of Castile, so there might be some changes to them before its final form.

I would suggest the option to bribe the council to increase its consensus, making it a tough decision by costing both corruption and money

The idea behind the mechanic is that the more cohesive your Empire is (and, because of that, the average Autonomy and Liberty Desire), the more efficient your 'System of Councils', therefore making it faster or slower to grow its 'Consensus' (and there, a first trade-off for the player, about how to grow). We also wanted to tackle a second trade-off for this new mechanic in a 'positive' way, so it's up to the player to keep the 'Consensus Power' and its scaling modifiers, or to spend it for the 10 years boost.

Yeah spain is way too stable by endgame. I'd personally add a mechanic that makes colonies much more likely to revolt simulating the wars of independence but thats just me

I think the work for this shouldn't be directed toward a new mechanic or disaster, but to better balance and improve the existing Liberty Desire mechanic, and the Wars of Independence after it.

Yay, new special navy units. Now I can ask for Turtle ships for Korea

On the Spanish mission, I was kinda sad about not changing anything for America. I really wished you guys changed the mission structure to reflect that the Spanish has reached the Philippines via the Pacific Ocean route.

Love the colonial mission accesses for the Aragon. These colonial missions were the reason I play Spain, so I kinda missed those every time I play as Aragon. Speaking of Aragon, will there be any change to the Aragon and Naples relationship?

We might take a look at that on the 'polish of the content' phase, yes. BTW, we've also made another small tweak for Aragon:

Please update the conditions for getting the "forever golden" achievement. You should be able to get it while starting as Aragon without changing your primary culture

We will update not only that achievement but also those of the Great Powers that are receiving content for the next DLC, as there some outdated conditions for them.

Honestly, it's so sad to see how little Aragon got in comparison with Castile and the other majors. Castile gets -25% Diplo Annex Cost (meaning they can reach -95% without any tag switches), -5% all power cost and 5% Admin Efficiency, and Aragon gets... -5% all power cost for 100 for completing all missions? That seems quite unfair, really. Castile just became literally the best starting non-horde tag in the game, while Aragon barely got anything and is actually the worst country for forming Spain.

Well, being honest, Aragon is not a major, but one of the 'historical losers' of this period, not only being 'integrated' into Spain after 1516, but losing most of its foral institutions after 1714. Anyway, if you play with Aragon, you have a focus in the Mediterranean that Castile has not; modifiers and numbers might be tweaked, if they feel a bit sad in comparison. on

 

[Pavía]

This dlc does set up a dangerous precedent that Paradox will retroactively make their dlcs worth nothing by stealing its content not by making it part of the base game wich would benefit everyone but by just putting it into the next dlc wich screws over everyone.

That is not our intention, but it is obvious that when working to renew the content of some countries, we have to go over older DLCs content, as we the devs try to think of the game as a whole. In fact, we're adding more content to half a dozen older DLCs, plus all the additions and changes we are making to the base game for the 1.35 update, to reward our player base. And if the time comes to 'free' some other game mechanics, as we think it's good for the base game, we will do that, of course.

 

[Aldaron]

Will Navarra get some love too? IMO they should have a core on Vizcaya, with the ability to diplomatically reclaim it like Serbia can on their cores that Hungary holds. Some more missions, and a reworked idea set would be nice too. Some potential rewards could include getting some free light ships when you acquire Vizcaya, a centre of trade, some "tall" bonuses (dev cost, goods produced, tax, manpower, fort defense) to the core Basque provinces that let you concentrate a lot of power in the north.

Make Navarran ideas less crummy

I was in Basque country recently and as any EU4 player does when they go somewhere, got an itch to play a relevant nation. Since it has an achievement too, I figured I'd give Navarra a spin. I had glanced over their idea set before but looking at...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Here's some suggestions where I think the most important part is changing its traditions so they're actually useable as a landlocked nation, and getting at least one military idea (ideally 10% morale) so it can at least somewhat compete with Castille/Spain and France.

Being Basque myself, Navarra will not receive as much love as I would have wanted due to time constrains, but I hope the changes that will be shown are liked by all Navarra fans.

I do agree that Vizcaya should have a Navarra core.

New Holy Orders are a very welcome addition! Since we will get so many of them, will it be possible now to change / revoke Holy Order lease (Maybe 20 - 50 years after giving it to them)?

I do love all the new options for holy orders! Especially the WIP art. Now we got so many options that will probably find myself questioning which one I should use. Still I do have to question any changes to how you establish holy orders? There's a lot of options but you can only ever use one pur state. Limiting their uses. Not just that you need to own the entire state for them to work and apply. That limits their use a lot, for example (I know it wasn't added but) the portguese order of christ, I can't add it to madeira. Because I dont own the entire state... a better example is Portugal taking key trade ports around the world. Jesuits had a good presense in japan, so naturally when I own nagasaki for larp reasons will want to establish the jesuits there. But i can't, because I dont own the entire state.
It would be lovely if you could establish holy orders even if you dont own the entire state, it would make the holy orders have a bigger impact in game and make them more flexible to use. You are still encouraged to use them when you own the entire state (since it gives +1 dev to all provinces).

As I envisioned them, I would like to indeed change the functioning of the Holy Orders from how they work now. Ideally you should actually be able to remove/add them at convenience for a more strategic use. We will see if it is possible before the release of the DLC. That being said, I am a very resolutive man so I will try my best to whip my colleagues so it makes into it.

About the Order of Christ, I do know that my Portuguese irmãos are a bit disappointed that I have not added them but give me a break! Originally I was only going to add 4 Holy Orders to each category and we ended up with 6 military orders! Hehehe.

 

[Pavía]

Are the changes to Holy Orders going to include a way to revoke them and switch to a different one?

If not, they risk being no more immersive than the original options for Holy Orders, that being a one-off click and that's done for the rest of the game.

Why would I want permanent missionary strength in a region? After I convert the provinces, I'd much rather have an option to pick another bonus for a set price.

Not in 1.35, although it's something that we're internally evaluating for a future update.

My point here is more Paradox managing the expectations, people are asking for Portugal new missions, redesign of the already existing missions, new naval units, goods produce modifiers, new provinces, switching goods in the provinces that Portugal have, events, etc and that seems impossible for a country that isn't going to be in the center of the update.

For me is better having a situation were Paradox says "OK, we are going to change this, this and this in Portugal, please people give some ideas" instead of "Give some ideas for Portugal people" and the comunity asking for new content that Paradox don't have intention in alocate in this DLC because they aren't testing in this moment.

I get it, and yes i agree the community should manage expectations.

I think what is happening is that people are giving suggestions on all things that could be improved (because like you correctly pointed out, we don't know what exactly is on the table to be changed), in the hopes that at least some of the points get addressed.

Just to add that Tinto team has been very accommodating to Portugal players feedback since they took charge, and for that alone they have my utmost appreciation. Hopefully our feedback can be usefull for whatever changes they have in store for us

Well, at the end of the day, we implemented some new content and changes for Portugal, right?

What will be the triggers of "Mediterranean Ambitions"?

Need a comprehensive list of impacted nations for this patch so I can avoid playing as them until the update.

Basically, do not play with any Great Power.

@Pavía Do i still need the land ofPortugal to full fill the mission Recover Portugal, because personally i would like to have two ways to full fill it one by conquering and 2 by having really good relations with them where both Portugal and Spain/Castille get a smal bonus. I would really like to play a game with Portugal as my friend and not as my enemy.

Yes, we fixed the mission to make it possible to complete by having Portugal as a vassal.

Awesome stuff! Would really love to see some content for Granada / Andalusia as well.

Not for 1.35, unfortunately, although we'll see if we can add something more in a future update!