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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 26th of April 2022

Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Development Diary! This week I will be presenting the Roadmap we have been preparing in the last weeks, giving a guide to some of the content that we are working on and will be showing you all in the coming months.

But first, you have probably noticed that I’m not @Johan , who is traditionally in charge of doing this. That’s because I’ve been recently promoted to Content Design Coordinator here in Paradox Tinto, so, as the position speaks for itself, I’ll be coordinating the new content created. Therefore, Johan thought it would be a good idea to take some boring work out from him to delegate this task to me.

On to the Roadmap. We will be sticking to the development principles we outlined in the past year. Those are:
  • Paid Features should be standalone, and easy to maintain.
  • No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs.
  • Reducing the bug-count as much as possible.
  • Add more content, like missions, graphics and music.
  • Flesh out the parts of the map that have not gotten attention the last few years.
At the moment, we’re quite satisfied with the current state of the game and we think it’s in a much better spot than one year ago. We’ve not only addressed a lot regarding the Leviathan issues (shivers), but have fixed a lot of legacy bugs (as we discussed on previous DDs), reducing our backlog of existing issues and starting a rebalancing of some parts of the game that were required and requested.

So, what can you expect from the next update (which will be version 1.34 of the game)? We will still be working on reducing our bug-count and improving game performance as much as possible. From a gameplay perspective, @Gnivom will continue making improvements to AI, and we are already addressing the combat balance (topics that will be discussed in future DDs, so you can give us feedback about it after we’ve finished a first round of internal tests). We’re going to do some rebalancing of Idea groups (nothing groundbreaking, but trying to diversify a bit their usefulness). Also, we want to keep improving the Religion balance, making some changes to a few of them to make them attractive enough, as we have done in the last two updates.

Regarding the new content, we believe that we need to improve the state of the base game before we start introducing more major reworks. We also think that we have room to keep expanding already existing features. So, in that sense, you can expect that there will be more government reforms, more estate privileges, and a few more goodies here and there. But our main focus in this field will be to continue improving and developing mission trees and other accompanying features in regions considered a bit backwards content-wise. And, speaking of, we’ve got a clue of the area where we will be focusing from next week’s DD:

shipwreckTOP-800x534.jpg

And that’s all for today! We’re very excited about the new upcoming content, and I promise you that my colleague @Ogele will show you more detailed content next Tuesday. Stay tuned, see you!
 
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Keep up the good work and congratulations on the promotion!

I don't know if some of these have already been mentioned as I didn't feel like reading through all the responses (although some are quite funny) ;) I'm not usually very active on the forums, but some things I have noticed about the game and would like to point out are:

- When you lose a diplomat (for example, because you got a temporary one from holding the papacy), but you had all of them assigned to automatic missions, the outliner becomes bugged, and the only way I know to fix it is to restart the game (save, restart, continue playing), maybe restarting the outliner works, but better to prevent it from happening in the first place :)
In short, the outliner and automatic diplomatic missions aren't working very well (many times when set on auto target enraged countries they will just tip it to +3, instead of +50, which would be better considering that would make countries leave a coalition).

- Vassals sometimes stop using their military, they will create many small regiments and then never create one army with it and will just stand still in their provinces, even though their war focus is not set to 'ZZZ' or defensive for example. Restarting the game works, but it's quite annoying if you have 5 vassals and you need them in your wars and you have to restart the game a lot of times just to have your vassals behave normally (also think of MP, if it happens there the entire lobby would need to be rehosted).
In short, vassals aren't doing their job (dying for the motherland).

- AI ally army management, will not reinforce or do anything sometimes, even though Austria-Hungary-Bohemia is in a war with me (the Almighty Teutons) against only Muscovy and we outnumber him 3:1, AI Austria, Hungary and Bohemia took a long time to start doing things, they never do what I tell them though with the objective mechanic, (Austria has 50k troops and 50k manpower) and could basically solo Muscovy, so its behaviour makes no sense (to me).
In short, the AI has become a bit of a wussy and never attacks someone sieging down their capital, even though it would be a defensive battle and they would absolutely destroy the enemy.

- Automatic sieging currently sometimes pingpongs between provinces next to a fort and doesn't go and take the fort right after it sieges a province next to a fort, causing it to just run around accomplishing nothing. It would be great if you could just set your 20 80k-armies as the Ottomans to siege down France and then have the AI actually manage your armies well.
In short, automatic sieging is currently not working in a feasible manner.

An idea:
- Overlap mapmode between: is there room to build (A), what terrain is the province (B) and are there nearby forts (and it's zone projection) (C). Or like being able to mark provinces with a flag or a symbol like 'construct a fort here'. This could help players in conquering strategic areas they have highlighted, possibly before a war, to construct a fort in. It would also be interesting if you could set a focus like that and actually have the AI or your vassal do something with it. For example like 'production focus' or 'defensive focus' on a specific province. The AI will now always build churches/mosques/temples everywhere, even if it makes no sense, for example prioritizing it over a marketplace in a Centre of Trade or Estuary. Like how the AI will build manufactories on grain and wine (Mamlukes and Ottomans are always doing it) and never delete them, sometimes the Mamlukes don't even build Marketplaces on their Alexandria hub trade provinces because it has a church, shipyard and production manufactory on grain. This makes conquering AI land a pain, because essentially you have to delete half their buildings and then do it yourself all over again..
In short: AI building management and map modes and markers could maybe improve quality of life for players.

AI peace deal wishes. I think the AI should be more receptive to white peacing sometimes. When it has completely conquered the war target (Player is defending an AI ally), but the player actually hasn't done anything in the entire war (for example) the AI will never accept white peace (even though that would instantly give him 100% warscore against his main target and thus allow him to end his war). For example in this multiplayer game Austria attacked Munich and another player was allied with Munich and decided to join it (he's new to the game), but he was playing as Sweden, had a relatively small army (22k) and was suffering debt etc. so he didn't actually fight austria. He blocked of the strait of Sjaelland, so what does AI Austria do? They run all the way via Russia and Finland (think of the attrition) via Finnmark to go and occupy stuff in Sweden, Sweden just hid his army on Gotland and the AI took what he wanted from Munich after conquering more warscore and only decided to give Kola (a 3 dev province) back to Novgorod (my vassal) as 'punishment' to Sweden? But if Sweden wanted peace with Austria he wouldn't just accept returning Kola, he would want 25 Warscore in cash, war reparations AND returning Kola. But why? War reparations for what? Sweden and Austria didn't even fight lol. So I think this kind of stuff is 'unhistoric' behavior. Take the deal, no country would (or should) run for 2 years through Russia and Finland just to make an ally of a main war goal release a 3 dev province XD Same goes for unconditional surrender, which the AI will now instantly click as soon as you have 100% warscore. You can no longer sit and wait for your previous coring to finish, unless you like war exhaustion a lot. I feel like they should only click unconditional surrender a bit later (theoretically someone could still join via enforce peace, and many a time they will still have armies, but prefer unconditional surrender, which I doubt :p)
In short: diplomatic interactions with AI at the end of war and in wars should maybe be up for tweaks at some point.

I think I had other points I recently encountered while playing, but I can't really come up with them at the moment. I hope they are to some use, or are about topics, bugs, you are already thinking about adressing.
 
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First off, Congrats on the Promotion. Second off, I'm not familiar with sunken ships at all, but judging by the fact that it's all wooden, I'm going to say that it's from a historical power that had a lot of navy stuff in its history. Given that the only areas in Europe still needing a massive overhaul are the Caucasus (please give Trebizond a mission tree. I need my Komnenos Byzantine fix.) and Scandinavia/the Baltics/PLC, I'm willing to put my money on the next rework to mission trees and potentially national ideas will be in Scandinavia at the least, and possibly include the Tuetons and Livonians (and Kurland) along with Poland and Lithuania... and MAYBE Mazovia and Riga.
 
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First off, Congrats on the Promotion. Second off, I'm not familiar with sunken ships at all, but judging by the fact that it's all wooden, I'm going to say that it's from a historical power that had a lot of navy stuff in its history. Given that the only areas in Europe still needing a massive overhaul are the Caucasus (please give Trebizond a mission tree. I need my Komnenos Byzantine fix.) and Scandinavia/the Baltics/PLC, I'm willing to put my money on the next rework to mission trees and potentially national ideas will be in Scandinavia at the least, and possibly include the Tuetons and Livonians (and Kurland) along with Poland and Lithuania... and MAYBE Mazovia and Riga.
And also Silesia + Carpathia.
 
I think main regions you should look are caucasus, siberia, scandinavia, baltics and maybe south America now.
Some Anatolian and Persian tags missed mission tree features a bit. depth is narrow. you should extend them.

and As QoL feature I still want you to make "raid map mode" so I can be sure when or where I can raid without checking occasionally.
 
For me?

-South American DLC with tweaks to colonization (Slower colonization and curbing the AI mega-confederations) and logistics (Something to stop Colonizers from sending hundreds of thousands of troops to the Americas and stop them from taking the African interior with ease. Something to stop the Ottomans marching all the way to siege Paris would also be welcome)

-Scandinavian/Baltic DLC with tweaks to technology and ideas (Something to stop the entire world to be technologically on pair by 1600 and allow Europeans to get significantly ahead but allow the ROTW to still keep up with ideas and some form of military competitiveness even if significantly behind tech)

-A final DLC with no specific regional focus that adresses the regions/tags that need it most, and polishes the edges of the more wonky mechanics, ties some loose ends and overall wraps up the game.
 
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Any chance of the next dlc including other countries in the high north, apart from Scandinavia. Wouldn't mind some flavor added to the Siberian tribes / alaska / pacific nw,
 
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When you're making events/Missions/flavor for skandinavia, it would be very good to not forget the livionian order/Riga/teutons/danzig (as you propably won't) BUT also give some action for the small nations in the north HRE that are missing unique content like Holstein, Hamburg (and all the other OPMS like Saxe-Lauenburg oder Verden) at the coast. And maybe also the island of scotlands (the irish mission tree still feels quite small)


Also chance to add the holstengate in lubeck!
 
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When you're making events/Missions/flavor for skandinavia, it would be very good to not forget the livionian order/Riga/teutons/danzig (as you propably won't) BUT also give some action for the small nations in the north HRE that are missing unique content like Holstein, Hamburg (and all the other OPMS like Saxe-Lauenburg oder Verden) at the coast. And maybe also the island of scotlands (the irish mission tree still feels quite small)


Also chance to add the holstengate in lubeck!
IMO especially Lübeck does deserve more attention. Its merchant republic gameplay is always a welcome change of pace to me. Although not only missions but also the faction system would need an overhaul.
 
I would just like to get your response on North American colonisation by European powers. Currently, in the games I've witnessed, the AI simply cannot colonise, or if they do, they get beaten off heavily by native federations.
This isn't what I expect from Europa Universalis and it actually ruins the game for me. Do i have to stay on 1.30 now, or move on and leave EU behind, or are you looking at sorting this out at all ?
@Pavía

Can colonial nations colonizing outside their colonial regions be changed? Maybe once they get land in a different colonial region, that land turns into a new colonial nation that corresponds that specific colonial region? It's problematic to see a colonial nation all over the place.
The North American Natives current situation is something we want to address, but I think there will be more incremental changes on them that a great rework. We are fixing some bugs related to them, and the AI is also going to work a bit better, but I cannot commit yet on more specific changes.
Keep up the good work and congratulations on the promotion!

I don't know if some of these have already been mentioned as I didn't feel like reading through all the responses (although some are quite funny) ;) I'm not usually very active on the forums, but some things I have noticed about the game and would like to point out are:

- When you lose a diplomat (for example, because you got a temporary one from holding the papacy), but you had all of them assigned to automatic missions, the outliner becomes bugged, and the only way I know to fix it is to restart the game (save, restart, continue playing), maybe restarting the outliner works, but better to prevent it from happening in the first place :)
In short, the outliner and automatic diplomatic missions aren't working very well (many times when set on auto target enraged countries they will just tip it to +3, instead of +50, which would be better considering that would make countries leave a coalition).

- Vassals sometimes stop using their military, they will create many small regiments and then never create one army with it and will just stand still in their provinces, even though their war focus is not set to 'ZZZ' or defensive for example. Restarting the game works, but it's quite annoying if you have 5 vassals and you need them in your wars and you have to restart the game a lot of times just to have your vassals behave normally (also think of MP, if it happens there the entire lobby would need to be rehosted).
In short, vassals aren't doing their job (dying for the motherland).

- AI ally army management, will not reinforce or do anything sometimes, even though Austria-Hungary-Bohemia is in a war with me (the Almighty Teutons) against only Muscovy and we outnumber him 3:1, AI Austria, Hungary and Bohemia took a long time to start doing things, they never do what I tell them though with the objective mechanic, (Austria has 50k troops and 50k manpower) and could basically solo Muscovy, so its behaviour makes no sense (to me).
In short, the AI has become a bit of a wussy and never attacks someone sieging down their capital, even though it would be a defensive battle and they would absolutely destroy the enemy.

- Automatic sieging currently sometimes pingpongs between provinces next to a fort and doesn't go and take the fort right after it sieges a province next to a fort, causing it to just run around accomplishing nothing. It would be great if you could just set your 20 80k-armies as the Ottomans to siege down France and then have the AI actually manage your armies well.
In short, automatic sieging is currently not working in a feasible manner.

An idea:
- Overlap mapmode between: is there room to build (A), what terrain is the province (B) and are there nearby forts (and it's zone projection) (C). Or like being able to mark provinces with a flag or a symbol like 'construct a fort here'. This could help players in conquering strategic areas they have highlighted, possibly before a war, to construct a fort in. It would also be interesting if you could set a focus like that and actually have the AI or your vassal do something with it. For example like 'production focus' or 'defensive focus' on a specific province. The AI will now always build churches/mosques/temples everywhere, even if it makes no sense, for example prioritizing it over a marketplace in a Centre of Trade or Estuary. Like how the AI will build manufactories on grain and wine (Mamlukes and Ottomans are always doing it) and never delete them, sometimes the Mamlukes don't even build Marketplaces on their Alexandria hub trade provinces because it has a church, shipyard and production manufactory on grain. This makes conquering AI land a pain, because essentially you have to delete half their buildings and then do it yourself all over again..
In short: AI building management and map modes and markers could maybe improve quality of life for players.

AI peace deal wishes. I think the AI should be more receptive to white peacing sometimes. When it has completely conquered the war target (Player is defending an AI ally), but the player actually hasn't done anything in the entire war (for example) the AI will never accept white peace (even though that would instantly give him 100% warscore against his main target and thus allow him to end his war). For example in this multiplayer game Austria attacked Munich and another player was allied with Munich and decided to join it (he's new to the game), but he was playing as Sweden, had a relatively small army (22k) and was suffering debt etc. so he didn't actually fight austria. He blocked of the strait of Sjaelland, so what does AI Austria do? They run all the way via Russia and Finland (think of the attrition) via Finnmark to go and occupy stuff in Sweden, Sweden just hid his army on Gotland and the AI took what he wanted from Munich after conquering more warscore and only decided to give Kola (a 3 dev province) back to Novgorod (my vassal) as 'punishment' to Sweden? But if Sweden wanted peace with Austria he wouldn't just accept returning Kola, he would want 25 Warscore in cash, war reparations AND returning Kola. But why? War reparations for what? Sweden and Austria didn't even fight lol. So I think this kind of stuff is 'unhistoric' behavior. Take the deal, no country would (or should) run for 2 years through Russia and Finland just to make an ally of a main war goal release a 3 dev province XD Same goes for unconditional surrender, which the AI will now instantly click as soon as you have 100% warscore. You can no longer sit and wait for your previous coring to finish, unless you like war exhaustion a lot. I feel like they should only click unconditional surrender a bit later (theoretically someone could still join via enforce peace, and many a time they will still have armies, but prefer unconditional surrender, which I doubt :p)
In short: diplomatic interactions with AI at the end of war and in wars should maybe be up for tweaks at some point.

I think I had other points I recently encountered while playing, but I can't really come up with them at the moment. I hope they are to some use, or are about topics, bugs, you are already thinking about adressing.
Thanks! I think we're already working on some fixes on diplomats issues. The AI is also going to receive improvements in some of the topics you're commenting, so after 1.33 and 1.34 changes, I think it's going to be on a much better spot. But, again, we will have a dedicated DD about the AI, so we will share with you more details at due time. ;)

I think that's all we have to say on this DD, today we'll be showing the new content we've been working on for the first time, I hope you really like it. :)
 
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The North American Natives current situation is something we want to address, but I think there will be more incremental changes on them that a great rework. We are fixing some bugs related to them, and the AI is also going to work a bit better, but I cannot commit yet on more specific changes.

Thanks! I think we're already working on some fixes on diplomats issues. The AI is also going to receive improvements in some of the topics you're commenting, so after 1.33 and 1.34 changes, I think it's going to be on a much better spot. But, again, we will have a dedicated DD about the AI, so we will share with you more details at due time. ;)

I think that's all we have to say on this DD, today we'll be showing the new content we've been working on for the first time, I hope you really like it. :)
Whilst you say you are going to do something about natives, over a period of time, its not very encouraging. This is a major part of the game for me and I suspect many others and to see a colonial USA never appearing is bad to say the least.
 
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The North American Natives current situation is something we want to address, but I think there will be more incremental changes on them that a great rework. We are fixing some bugs related to them, and the AI is also going to work a bit better, but I cannot commit yet on more specific changes.

Thanks! I think we're already working on some fixes on diplomats issues. The AI is also going to receive improvements in some of the topics you're commenting, so after 1.33 and 1.34 changes, I think it's going to be on a much better spot. But, again, we will have a dedicated DD about the AI, so we will share with you more details at due time. ;)

I think that's all we have to say on this DD, today we'll be showing the new content we've been working on for the first time, I hope you really like it. :)

will there still be a dev diary today?
 
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The North American Natives current situation is something we want to address, but I think there will be more incremental changes on them that a great rework. We are fixing some bugs related to them, and the AI is also going to work a bit better, but I cannot commit yet on more specific changes.

This line is extremely concerning to me, colonisation of the New World was such a major part of the game's period and the AI literally can't do anything. A few lines of code being tweaked isn't enough to fix it and the overall mechanic is too important to leave it over time. Man Leviathan just keeps aging like milk for me....

I know you guys can't fix and tend to everything at once but oof
 
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This line is extremely concerning to me, colonisation of the New World was such a major part of the game's period and the AI literally can't do anything. A few lines of code being tweaked isn't enough to fix it and the overall mechanic is too important to leave it over time. Man Leviathan just keeps aging like milk for me....

I know you guys can't fix and tend to everything at once but oof
MAJOR is the word.
It seems Europa Universalis has morphed into a world meme simulator, where every country now has a very ahistorical and unrealistic fair crack at the whip. A little like a complicated version of Risk. I think I'm done with it now. Thanks for the memories, and see you in EU5, maybe.
 
Hello and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Development Diary! This week I will be presenting the Roadmap we have been preparing in the last weeks, giving a guide to some of the content that we are working on and will be showing you all in the coming months.

But first, you have probably noticed that I’m not @Johan , who is traditionally in charge of doing this. That’s because I’ve been recently promoted to Content Design Coordinator here in Paradox Tinto, so, as the position speaks for itself, I’ll be coordinating the new content created. Therefore, Johan thought it would be a good idea to take some boring work out from him to delegate this task to me.

On to the Roadmap. We will be sticking to the development principles we outlined in the past year. Those are:
  • Paid Features should be standalone, and easy to maintain.
  • No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs.
  • Reducing the bug-count as much as possible.
  • Add more content, like missions, graphics and music.
  • Flesh out the parts of the map that have not gotten attention the last few years.
At the moment, we’re quite satisfied with the current state of the game and we think it’s in a much better spot than one year ago. We’ve not only addressed a lot regarding the Leviathan issues (shivers), but have fixed a lot of legacy bugs (as we discussed on previous DDs), reducing our backlog of existing issues and starting a rebalancing of some parts of the game that were required and requested.

So, what can you expect from the next update (which will be version 1.34 of the game)? We will still be working on reducing our bug-count and improving game performance as much as possible. From a gameplay perspective, @Gnivom will continue making improvements to AI, and we are already addressing the combat balance (topics that will be discussed in future DDs, so you can give us feedback about it after we’ve finished a first round of internal tests). We’re going to do some rebalancing of Idea groups (nothing groundbreaking, but trying to diversify a bit their usefulness). Also, we want to keep improving the Religion balance, making some changes to a few of them to make them attractive enough, as we have done in the last two updates.

Regarding the new content, we believe that we need to improve the state of the base game before we start introducing more major reworks. We also think that we have room to keep expanding already existing features. So, in that sense, you can expect that there will be more government reforms, more estate privileges, and a few more goodies here and there. But our main focus in this field will be to continue improving and developing mission trees and other accompanying features in regions considered a bit backwards content-wise. And, speaking of, we’ve got a clue of the area where we will be focusing from next week’s DD:


And that’s all for today! We’re very excited about the new upcoming content, and I promise you that my colleague @Ogele will show you more detailed content next Tuesday. Stay tuned, see you!

>>No major feature reworks while we still have lots of bugs.

AND, I have many many things to suggest for LOTS of major features reworks!!!
...Okay okay, I understand you are not yet ready to do that.
I won't demand them, until you take care of those lots of bugs. I won't, for now.


Instead, I want some minor changes for naval blockade. (It's just 'minor changes', trust me)
Here's my suggestion. Add additional effects to naval blockade.


1. Blockade effects toward the economy of provinces

In current version, the effects of 100% naval blockade toward a province, is this.
  • +20% Local recruitment time
  • +20% Local shipbuilding time
  • +0.1 Monthly devastation
That's not enough. That's almost 90% of the reason why they say naval units in EU4 are useless.

I suggest more effects to 100% naval blockade toward a province, to be like this.
  • +20% Local recruitment time
  • +20% Local shipbuilding time
  • +0.3 Monthly devastation
  • -25% Local goods produced modifier
  • -25% Trade value

In addition, when the province is an island (second definition), the blockade should have more effects, like this.
  • +50% Local recruitment time
  • +50% Local shipbuilding time
  • +0.5 Monthly devastation
  • -50% Local goods produced modifier
  • -50% Trade value


2. Blockading hostile units & forts

When you 100% blockade enemy provinces, hostile regiments there, will get...

When you blockade an hostile forts (under siege by your regiments), it'll get...
  • +2 Siege bonus for 100% blockade (-2 penalty for 0% blockade, then +1 bonus per 25% blockade)
  • -25% Fort defense (-1% defense per 4% blockade)

Again, I see these should be 'minor changes'.
 
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