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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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So, what if we don't want to stay catholic? What if we embrace protestant or reformed christianity? There were some dutch people in Japan too during that time. There were protestant and reformed missionaries trying to get permission to preach by trying to convince the local lords, that catholics and protestants were not the same. The rulers were mostly concerned about the catholics who were primarily loyal to the pope, and they didn't want that. But the protestants failed to convince the lords that they were different. The japanese rulers felt like the westerners who all looked the same, wore the same clothes, wrote the same and basically practised the same religion were trying to decieve them by pretending to be different. But what if they were successful, the japanese cracked down on catholicism, but allowed protestant to preach? That is a plausible what-if scenario.

Why is all the christian content locked behind being catholic?
 
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What do these new missions mean for the Daimyo missions before forming Japan? Do those go away after forming Japan but still exist? Cause a lot of them do overlap
 
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Japan now looks a bit broken in the hands of the player, but interesting nonetheless with a lot of replayability with the different paths.

Anyway...
Any chance on taking a second look at the Mount Fuji monument? It's probably the worst monument in the game right now. Maybe make the provincial modifier apply regio wide (so Japan only) at lvl 3?

This please, and also please change the requirements to being part of the Japanese culture group so that we can use it if we go down to the Christian path.
 
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It's pretty weird to me that going Catholic renames your country to "Kirishitan Japan". It would be like if forming Prussia changed your name to "Protestant Prussia". There should at least be an option for keeping your country name as is.
Think they did it to make it feel more impactful then just having a landline to the Pope in gameplay.
 
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A decision to rename when you have Korea and China please. I feel like rather than staying with the name Shogunate or Japan they'd call the country after a Dynasty like most other dynasties rather than just Japan (which would just refer to the islands) in the 1600's. I feel like Yamato would work as a dynasty name for when Japan becomes the emperor of China.
 
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@Ogele @PDX Big Boss @Johan, you're probably already done with changes to Russia, but anyway I want you to look at some of my old proposals: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/additions-to-the-map-and-ni-of-russia.1141029/

Maybe at least some of them will be in a game with 1.35, which will definetely make me and more players from my country more happy. I don't have the knowledge about dev resource to work with content yet I've tried to provided the best I could. Also, their NIs are definetely showing their age in the current patch, especially with just 5% morale of armies.
 
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Qing and Japan can receive Imperial Chinese mission but not Yuan, please don't do this :(
Yuan, in my opinion, should have exclusive Yuan missions when it's formed. Something like Ming will recieve with this DLC. 1st row should be about your old Mongol days ( Mongol generic missions that could sort of be updated), 2nd row if you restore Yuan and 3rd if you take Mandate and become EoC. This is just my opinion.
 
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Please reconsider your stance on colonization speed and institution spread speed. They are both way too fast (institutions after 1600, colonization always), making the game more like 4X than a historical one. I am only reposting this in hopes that you will take note. I will now shamelessly summon @Johan . I just want my favorite game back.
Institution spread speed after 1600 is not only too fast, it's silly, so it's waste of time playing the last 150-200 years of the game.
 
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I think it would be better if Samurai units got Shock damage instead of discipline, because the samurai were more prominent in the first half of the game's timeframe.

Also, will we ever be seeing a rework of the Netherlands? Their mission tree is really starting to show its age.
 
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I'm worried that a lot of these modifiers and rewards will make gameplay in these regions heavily reliant on "following your mission tree", otherwise you miss out on a lot of flavour provided for the nation. Personally I'm not a fan of min-maxing decisions early on and worrying about whether I picked the right option because now I miss out on X reward because I chose Y option 100 years ago.

Another thing I'm concerned with is the AI's capability at actually completing these missions. Only the rewards are shown in this DD so it's hard to get a grasp of how feasiable these missions are for the AI to achieve, and could lead to "player modifier bloat" which was seen from the LoTH mission trees.

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.

This is amazing, I'm glad we'll finally be able to add in scriptable buttons. Is there any plans to make other interfaces like the province or military GUIs moddable too?
 
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I personally really dislike the idea of my country being renamed as a direct result of a mission. I want to play as Japan, not as ''the shogunate''.

Maybe have it pop up an event in which you can choose to rename your country, or to just stay as Japan.
Hey guys, I wanna take a couple minutes and address some comments. First off, you're right. No name change should be enforced. If you do not like it , I can just as easily make a little decision that will revert you to your original name, this is good feedback!
It's pretty weird to me that going Catholic renames your country to "Kirishitan Japan". It would be like if forming Prussia changed your name to "Protestant Prussia". There should at least be an option for keeping your country name as is.
It s no secret I really like renaming my country, would you like to offer alternative suggestions ? I am all ears!
So, what if we don't want to stay catholic? What if we embrace protestant or reformed christianity? There were some dutch people in Japan too during that time. There were protestant and reformed missionaries trying to get permission to preach by trying to convince the local lords, that catholics and protestants were not the same. The rulers were mostly concerned about the catholics who were primarily loyal to the pope, and they didn't want that. But the protestants failed to convince the lords that they were different. The japanese rulers felt like the westerners who all looked the same, wore the same clothes, wrote the same and basically practised the same religion were trying to decieve them by pretending to be different. But what if they were successful, the japanese cracked down on catholicism, but allowed protestant to preach? That is a plausible what-if scenario.

Why is all the christian content locked behind being catholic?
Christian is christian, catholic or otherwise :)
What do these new missions mean for the Daimyo missions before forming Japan? Do those go away after forming Japan but still exist? Cause a lot of them do overlap
Daimyos still have the same missions, tbh it always bothered me daimyos and the formable shared the same tree, so upon reforming japan you get a new shiny tree, more flavor and leave the old tree behind!
I wish we could dismantle the mandate of heaven, like a revolutionary CV or something.
I have a lot of ideas for this...
 
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Shouldn't the samurai be cavalry units? My understadning was that they mainly fought on horseback, just like European knights.
 
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What do non-Catholic Christians get instead of the Papal Influence? Also, how will this interact with non-monarchical Japans? Integrate the Sohei is a strong reason to go Theocratic.

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!

The only thing Russia needs is for Yumen trade to flow towards Siberia.

And the restate the question I had last week:

How will the Fall of the Mamluks handle blobbed out Mamluks?
 
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Yuan, in my opinion, should have exclusive Yuan missions when it's formed. Something like Ming will recieve with this DLC. 1st row should be abount your old Mongol days ( Mongol generic missions That could sort of be updated), 2nd row if you restore Yuan and 3rd if you take Mandate and become EoC. This is just my opinion.
So, let's address this. The way the Yuan missions are scripted right now is kinda convoluted in the sense that they are not tied to a tag of Yuan - if memory serves right - and rather, they are attached to certain cultures. If I were to add the EoC missions on top of those cultures, I would have to re-script the same missions into the Yuan file, with different names in the script (because same names conflict even between different files). I did this process already for Japan and it's a bit tiring and may itself present more conflicts in the future.

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 :D
 
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