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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 31st of January 2023 - Japan

Konnichiwa! Welcome to another week’s Dev Diary, this time around focusing on Japan. As a region, it already received a good amount of interesting content during ‘Mandate of Heaven’, with the introduction of the Shinto interactions, as well as the Shogunate. The goal of revisiting Japan is to expand its mechanics & tie them around new flavor in the form of a mission tree for Japan, new events as well as government reforms. Let’s take a look!

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[WIP] All values, art and even layouts showcased here are work in progress![WIP]​

Note, as you probably might have guessed already, Japan also gets access to the Emperor of China dedicated branch that I showcased a few weeks ago albeit the descriptions and titles are curated for immersion and accuracy reasons.

The tree will be granted upon forming Japan and it houses 30 new missions, 46 if you count the Emperor of China branch, as well as a dozen new events (both tied to the missions AND independent from it) as well as several new government reforms and even a special new unit, the Samurai.

The top half of the mission tree will deal with the internal affairs of the island, instructing you to guide the nation through military, commercial as well as administrative changes you may wish to enact. As we will see in detail further down, nearly every single mission is tied to either a new mechanic specifically made for Japan or a dynamic set of rewards.

Alongside all these cool new additions, we have also created a new special unit for Japan, the Samurai! They will not be easy to recruit and the intention is that they make about 10-25% of your forcelimit as your elite frontline, as shown below:

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Give us some ideas about what color they should be and feel free to chime in with some overall feedback regarding these very powerful bonuses​

Every Daimyo, Shogun and Indep. Daimyo will have access to the new unit either via their national ideas or via their government type, which are accessible in the base game. Furthermore, Japan has a +15% Samurai Forcelimit in its ideas!

Let's take a look at some highlights around new events and missions:

The mission ‘Bushido’ has not only been reworked from the ground up, but it also interacts with the aforementioned new special unit for Japan, the Samurai. By elevating your army professionalism and presenting a robust and powerful army, you will be rewarded with the following event:


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Kept you waiting, huh ?
These options will reform a significant part of the following 2 missions, based on your choices.
Should you choose to focus on the matter of land, you will be greeted by the mission ‘Bugeijuuhappan’ (or ‘18 types of martial arts’), a carefully curated combination of warfare techniques. Here’s Bugeijuuhappan’s reward:

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While, opting to focus on maritime warfare, would yield the mission ‘A New Naval Academy’ with the following reward:

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[This will probably be nerfed, it’s quite powerful!]​

But the dynamic nature of these missions does not stop there! The mission ‘Train the Samurai’ will also be impacted by your choice in the Book of Five Rings event as shown below:

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A very interesting part of the missions revolves around the fact that many of them will have their outcome depend on how you handle certain Shinto Incidents (if you own MoH and are yourself Shinto):


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[Glorious Nippon steel, folded over 1000 times!]

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The tree also plays around some new government reforms, as shown below:

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[That trade value will definitely be nerfed, at the very least! Please keep in mind these numbers are FAR from final]

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[Max Effect of Absolutism amplifies your current Absolutism’s potency. If 100 Absolutism grants
30% Administrative Efficiency, then “20% Max Effect of Absolutism” will amplify the 30% up to 36%]

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Before we move on to the conquest, second part of the tree, here are a few events that are independent of the mission tree:

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Moving on to the conquest branch of the tree, you will have the opportunity to seize land in both Korea and China as well as the Malacca Trade Node:

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[Should you claim the Mandate, you will be able to fabricate Tributary CBs on anyone, as long as they are weaker than you development-wise and independent]

The event ‘Fate of the Mandate’ which is granted after finishing the ‘Mandate to Rule Them All’ mission may grant you the opportunity to seize the Mandate, mid-war, and gain a powerful modifier to go with it:

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[Should you complete the mission while already a hegemon, you will gain a special easter egg modifier called 'Unleash the Shinkirou']

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The above 3 missions will have their rewards depending entirely on the current level of isolation! While we are at it, I took the liberty of changing the bonuses of isolation as I felt that the Open-side was incredibly more powerful than the Isolated side. I chose to have the extremes (0 and 4) be somewhat more powerful in most ocassions, so they are something a player will actively work towards during the entire game. Of course, this does not mean the other levels of isolation are useless, on the contrary:


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Finally, let’s take a look at the mission ‘A New Buddha?’ This one will deal with the relationship between Edo-Period Japan and Christianity:

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Note, the modifier Protectors of Eastern Catholicism will also grant Papal Influence, which is not visible right now​

Should we complete the mission by eradicating Christianity, we will gain access to the following mission and reward:

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Note; all these new reforms will also bolster the amount of Samurai you can recruit, by +10%​

Siding with the Shogun will rename your country to ‘The Shogunate’ and grant you a new and powerful T1 reform whereas siding with the Emperor, will yield the following event:

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[Note; your title with this reform is ‘God-Emperor’]

HOWEVER, if you choose (for whatever reason) to embrace Christianity in the Shinto incident, you will gain the following mission and reward:
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The above event proclaims the ending of the Kirishitan Incident. You won't need to conquer any land outside


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[NOTE; the art is PLACEHOLDER!]

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Please keep in mind the art and the numbers showcased here are a WIP!
The Government buttons showcased here were created from scratch with our new and fully moddable mechanic, which will allow you to create your own government buttons as you see fit should you wish to mod them. You can add 0 buttons or up to however many you can stuff on the UI and have them act accordingly or even evolve based on requirements or rewards you subscribe to them.

These particular ones operate much like the Tsardom buttons, but I could just as easily remove them and have a large bar in their stead, akin to the one we showcased last week for the Ottoman Decadence.


Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this Dev Diary. Next week we will be discussing new content for Russia with @Ogele!

This week's chapel comic, courtesy of Father Lorris:

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Europea got the name of Japan from the Chinese name for the region, which was Zaipan.

The problem was a couple-fold. Japan invaded when it still wasn't fully unified. A lot of the Shogun's Daimyo didn't want to commit troops because they didn't support the Shogun. This is actually mirrored pretty closely if you attempted the war at the correct date with the timeline feature- vassal swarms can be strong, but they also don't know how to concentrate their forces, and you can't always order them to do what you want, especially if they disloyal. You'd have one big strong force, and then a half dozen 3 stacks that could be knocked out by Chinese reinfocrments, which is basically what happened IRL. Similarly for the navy- as you said there wasn't a real investment in a navy, but each clan largely handled their own logistics, meaning several small japanese fleets ferrying over troops. Third was the fact the Samurai just completely ignored southwestern Korean, bypassing it to get to Seoul, which gave the Koreans there a base to continually strike at the Japanese. And by the time the Japanese realized this was a problem they were too busy arguing with themselves to really solve the problem. Lastly of course was Admiral Yi the lynchpin of Korean resistance who professionalized the chunk of the Navy he could control and innovated the Korean turtle ships, and being smart enough to only strike when he had the advantage losing very few ships.

In a sense the OTL korean invasion plays out like you had one player playing Japan with ai Daimyo, a bunch of people playing Korea, with a pro-player micro-ing the shit in southwestern korea being Admiral Yi until the Chinese doomstacks show up. Getting it to play out exactly as it did in real life would be impossible to replicate in any circumstance.
Things are not as complicated as you think...
Japanese warships at that time were very bad. Before receiving technical support from missionaries and British sailors, Japan's navigation technology was the most backward in East Asia.
The stability of these ships is poor, and they can't install artillery, so they have failed repeatedly in the naval battle. Their few naval victories are based on the timidity of their opponents,when Yi Sun-sin was unable to command the navy, it was an incompetent general who took over the Joseon navy. He was arrogant, drunk and good at shirking responsibility. In the game, you won't destroy all your ships on the first day of the enemy's attack, but in history, he did so...
In addition, I think Japan should be called Nippon。
 
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Japan's main problem is not a lot of room to expand once it is united. There's a couple missions for taking Korea, but that's about it. A lot more flavor added to the Korean War would help since OTL it was a very big affair for all sides. Not to mention one of the ultimate goals was to take China, so more flavor added there, and it also seems there's a couple of alt-history new world missions.
You can take explo/expansion and dominate the Spice Islands (even with pure conquest). Which gives infinite money so early in the game, coupled with a good navy Ming becomes a cakewalk.

After China falls what do you do? There is barely any GP to interact with. I guess you can go to NA to mess with Iberian colonies or Siberia to mess with Russia but that is just boring in my opinion.
 
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Christian Japan?! Meh, I don't want it.

JAPAN IS THE COUNTRY WITH 8 MILLION GODS.

Nobody dare can't make Japan believe 'only-god'.
Instead, Yahweh should be 'a member' of 8 million gods!
Could you please not say the Name of Names. It is deeply offensive to us Jews.

Edit: I see the anti Semites arent just in HOI4...
 
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I think the mission tree is more like fulfilling players' needs so adopting myth is completely okay.

But I do have one question though. Isn't it kinda weird to use the term 'Imjin war' when you're playing as Japan? Imjin (壬辰) means the year it broke out, with Chinese characters pronounced in the Korean way.

As you can see in the names section on Wikipedia (ENG, JAP), they call this war completely different. I think Bunroku Keicho no Eki, or Bunroku no Eki are more fitting terms for the mission.
 
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I like the bonuses received here for going catholic, as currently being catholic is a bit bland (as I don't think you can get cardinals, so you're locked out of mechanics). The bonuses might be a bit overtuned, but it does encourage a different playstyle, especially with the generals to rulers and papal influence from battles and easy access to war against heathens/heretics (though given Japan is an island, it might be nice to make this not require being a neighbour).

I don't think renaming the country "Kirishitan Japan" makes sense, for one thing, Kirishitan is just the Japanese for christian (and we don't use foreign languages anywhere else in the game, and it just looks ugly), and secondly, they wouldn't rename the country to "ReligionX-Japan". Japan's name means "Sun Origin", and comes from Chinese, so if you wanted to imagine an alternative name, you'd need to think of a christian interpretation of "Sun Origin", put it into Japanese/Chinese and then anglicize it. I don't think the effort is worth it though, so I'd stick with Japan.

More fruitful would be to imagine a Christian flag for Japan. Perhaps the current flag but with a Cross set in the middle of Red Sun, or with a cross stylized in a Japanese manner.

However there is a significant omission in this dev diary. Currently we have roughly 3 paths: Shogunate(historical), (Chinese) Empire and Christian. There should be a 4th path for Ikko Ikki/Buddhist. A victorious Ikko Ikki should see Japan become a buddhist peasant theocracy, and persecute the Daimyo and samurai class. I think the lack of dynamic missions for a Buddhist/Ikko Ikki outcome is a significant omission here, and would be a good opportunity to design something fun and interesting.
 
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I like the bonuses received here for going catholic, as currently being catholic is a bit bland (as I don't think you can get cardinals, so you're locked out of mechanics). The bonuses might be a bit overtuned, but it does encourage a different playstyle, especially with the generals to rulers and papal influence from battles and easy access to war against heathens/heretics (though given Japan is an island, it might be nice to make this not require being a neighbour)
Can you explain where's this "different playstyle" in these modifiers & mechanics?
 
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I don't have a problem with more flavour for Japan, but given they historically failed miserably when they tried to conquer Korea and China, Korea at the very least also needs significantly more buffs and flavour. It's been kind of a thing in Paradox games for a long time that Japan gets disproportionately more power and attention than Korea, which seems to be projecting backwards from the 20th century rather than being a fair accounting of reality in most of their history. Korea should be weaker than a united Japan, yes, but not a cakewalk.
 
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I know people really want Yuan to have access to these but I can't in good conscience promise it. If there is time, I will attempt it though, I got your back
Not only some people want new missions for Yuan, but also for Korea. Can you adress some love for them (so they can receive at the very least EoC missions on top of old mission tree?)
 
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If you think that Japan deserves so many military buffs, I hope you don't forget the Wanli Korean War. The Ming Dynasty easily won the war against Japan with a relatively inferior force.
 
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I don't have a problem with more flavour for Japan, but given they historically failed miserably when they tried to conquer Korea and China, Korea at the very least also needs significantly more buffs and flavour. It's been kind of a thing in Paradox games for a long time that Japan gets disproportionately more power and attention than Korea, which seems to be projecting backwards from the 20th century rather than being a fair accounting of reality in most of their history. Korea should be weaker than a united Japan, yes, but not a cakewalk.
You mean Hideyoshi landed in Busan on April 14, occupied Seoul on May 2, and occupied Pyongyang on June 15?
 
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Great work. Especially the Naval Bonus Options alternative path, having Japan Player being able to pick a naval or army based approach is a great use of branching missions.

For multiplayer Japan is the only real nation that has the potential (in Multi Player) to combat a mid/late game naval focus Great Britain. This is because it has the freedom to pick naval military idea as it doesn't need to compete on land.

To ensure this is the case it would be great if you could expand on the naval route for Japan players. With perhaps an alternative government form and name change? And perhaps at the same time you can get a different set of national ideas and a unique naval doctrine (looked at wiki looks like there is already one :))
 
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To be fair, I overtuned these modifiers with the idea in mind that the community is a very good pointer for matters of balance. Please rest assured these numbers will be thoroughly reviewed after we collect feedback! I think for starters (as an example) 25% for both hull and cannons is way too much, and that arty fire, while a fun idea, is way too strong!

Can you add the 25% hull size and ship cannons modifiers to the custom nation designer instead then? :)
 
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Will new mission tree allow us to stay as shogunate? In current one some missions require forming Japan and this abolishes the ‘Shogunate’ government reform.
That's ture, because it does not occupy diplomatic relations, the shogunate is perfect for players.
Uhhh
So now Korea is the country, blocked by two big "regions" of reworked missions trees of China and Japan. Now, culture convert to Japan as Korea is absolute must, and it is very sad...
Really? I have always chosen to turn Korea into Manchu. By switching the proportion of major cultures, I can easily transform Korean culture into Sino-Korean culture.
Although the combat effectiveness of cavalry is not as good as that of nomads, the economy is better and the politics is more stable.
I'd like to point out that this is not a joke. I have very limited knowledge of the region, but from what I've heard Ryukyu had an important role in facilitating trade between Japan and China and I think it would make sense to represent this in some capacity.
This is really a very unpleasant place for me. There is not even a trade center in Ryukyu. In addition, if necessary, Ryukyu should be made an independent culture of the Japanese cultural group.
 
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We actually have people in the team that have lived in Japan, and that do research on Japanese sources. But we have to take into account how to make that material attractive and funny to play, so it's impossible to have a game being 100% historically accurate (and, to be honest, tackling correctly Japanese Early Modern history would require a new Sengoku GSG).
i mean. i would take a new sengoku
 
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