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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 7th of June 2022

Hallå allihopa! Welcome to our next Development Diary for Europa Universalis IV! Today is the day where we finally get to cover the content for Sweden, so let’s get started!

Yesterday, June 6th, it was celebrated the National Day of Sweden, as the remembrance of Gustav Vasa being elected king in 1523. This was a pivotal moment in Swedish history, as it finished the union with the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway after more than one century of common government. It happened after some decades of a troublesome political relation between the Sweden nobility and the Danish kings that ended in the tragic Stockholm Bloodbath, and the already mentioned coronation of King Gustav, starting the famous and powerful Vasa dynasty, which would rule until mid 17th century.

The mission tree for Sweden recaptures the rise of Sweden to the dominant power of the Baltics prior to the Great Northern War. But it also covers other ambitions and developments of Sweden.
swedish_mission_tree.png
The Swedish mission tree is split into two blocks just like Denmark’s: the first half of the mission tree is all about the historical conquest and their further ambitions in Europe. The other half, on the other hand, is a lot more about flavor missions which focus on internal development, colonization and of course the religious direction of your country.

Starting with the “conquest block”, Sweden’s initial missions - “Engelbrekt Rebellion”, “Swedish Allies”, “Military Advice” and “Support from the Estates” - revolve around preparing yourself for your war for independence against Denmark. It should be noted that certain events such as “The Engelbrekt Rebellion” have been incorporated into these first missions.

“Swedish Allies” can be completed by improving the relations of Denmark’s enemies / rivals and fires the following event:
supporters_event.png

Note: Support Independence is becoming part of this DLC.
supporters_event_second_option.png

Note: Numbers are not final.
Not in the picture is the third option, which just decreases your liberty desire by 50%. This option is mostly used by the AI in case Denmark managed to handle the Swedish nobility already and the AI just happens to complete this mission by accident.

If you have chosen the second option and you win your independence war against Denmark without any allies whatsoever then the following event will fire for you:
independence_victory_event.png
However, if you try to cheese it by selecting the second option and then getting support for independence from another country then you get this event during the war with Denmark:
anti_cheese_event.png
With the mission “Military Advise” you get another event which will support you in your quest for independence:


vasa_leader_event.png

Note: Johan (Kristernsson) Vasa is the grandfather of Gustav I Vasa. If you complete this mission at a later date you get Erik Vasa - the father of Gustav - or even Gustav Vasa himself. There is virtually no difference between them other than their names however.

When you gain your independence while the modifier is active then another event will fire for you:
new_king_event.png
Of course you have the option to keep your current king. The AI will always choose the king with the better stats.

Finally, with “Support from the Estates” you can choose what kind of support you want and from who:
estate_support_event.png
The Nobility will grant you a level 2 discipline advisor for only 25% of his price, the Clergy gives a large amount of Papal Influence and the Burghers will lend you galleys for your fight against Denmark. However, taking any of their support will put you into debt with the estate in question and you will have to enact a decision to get out of it. This decision is a requirement for one of the late missions. However, you can completely ignore it altogether by either choosing the fourth option (which gives 20 Prestige) or waiting until the “Stockholm Bloodbath” event fires (which has been presented in the Denmark Development Diary). In the case you complete this mission after the Bloodbath event the estates will grant you their support for free due to the atrocity done to your Nobles by your overlord.

After all these missions and events you are more than ready to face your overlord and declare your Independence War! The missions after “Declare Independence!” are rather self explanatory as they now focus on conquering the coastline of the Baltic Sea. However, some missions are a little bit more special.

“Stabilize the Kingdom” is one of them. It requires you to, well, stabilize your kingdom by having high legitimacy, stability and have no debts to any of your estates. In return the mission lets you choose how to complete other missions:
poland_policy_event.png

poland_policy_event_second_option.png

poland_policy_event_third_option.png
Three options; three ways to complete the “The Kingdom of Poland” mission later on. The third option is especially interesting for those who want to have a co-op campaign with Sweden and Poland or who do not want to blob into Polish territory. This gives some flexibility to your mission tree without going too much into the “what if” territory which is reserved for the Orders.

The other mission of interest is “Swedish Skåneland” - or rather its reward. Completing this mission will give you a special casus belli against Denmark if they still have Norway as subject:
norway_cb.png

norway_po.png

Note: If Norway is independent then you gain a normal PU cb against Norway, not a special one against Denmark.

The mission “The Crown of Norway” rewards you with a historical friendship with Norway if you have them as your subject with at least 50 opinion of you.

Last but not least let’s take a look at the “finisher” missions of the conquest block. “Dominium maris baltici” has two ways to be completed: you either own the entire coastline, or you have allies who own it. If you complete it by having you or your subject own the coastline then you gain permanently -5 Years of Separatism and +2 Monthly Splendor.

The mission “Stormakstiden” rewards you with the following event:
swe_empire_event.png

Note: The country of Scandinavia will be worth forming with the free update, but that is topic for a later Development Diary.
Finally, the mission “Lord of Eastern Europe” fires the following event:
varangian_route.png

Note: This event and the mission “Varangians’ Legacy”, which requires you to conquer and develop Novgorod, are the only Viking references for Sweden. Asking for more is futile.

Now with the conquest missions covered let’s move on to the flavor missions for Sweden - and they are plentiful. The flavor missions are divided into 5 branches: Internal missions regarding the Sami and the Swedish peasants, Swedish colonialism, Trade and Industrialization, Military Reforms and Religious matters.

The Internal missions on the most left side of the mission tree handle the Swedish peasantry, which play a large role in Sweden’s history, and the Sami population which is inevitably part of your country. By establishing 10 manufactories in Grain, Fish and Livestock provinces, having 2 stability and by either having overcome the “The Dacke War” disaster or by having at least 10 Grain, Fish or Livestock provinces with 10 development you can complete the mission “The Peasants’ Agenda”, giving the following reward:

peasants_effect.png
Speaking of the disaster: the Dacke War disaster has become a little bit more dangerous and more likely to trigger.
dacke_war_disaster.png

Note: Numbers are not final.

The mission “Integrate the Sami” on the other hand is about your cultural approach to them and can be completed by having all the Sami provinces a religion and culture you accept - how you do this is up to you. This will unlock the Burghers “Forest Expansion” estate privilege:
forest_expansion.png
The mission “Forest Expansion” is developing your forest provinces, so not really much to talk about. The reward reduces the Development Cost of all owned Arctic Scandinavian provinces by 40% however, which makes playing tall with just Scandinavian provinces an actual option.

The colonial missions of Sweden are self explanatory: you take the provinces which were historically part of Swedish colonial ambitions.

On the other side, however, are the missions about dominating the Baltic trade and industrializing your country - your copper and iron provinces to be more precise. Highlight of this branch is an event where you can decide what the price of copper will be for Europe:
copper_event.png

copper_event_second_option.png

copper_event_third_option.png

Note: Keep in mind that the burst of money you get from the other two options scale with your own production of Copper and Iron.

The missions regarding the religious matter work very similar to the ones of Denmark. Here are the three paths with Catholicism on the left, Protestantism in the middle and Humanist in the right:
religious_missions.png

Highlights of each path are the following things:
  • For Humanist, the mission “Disempower the Clergy” removes triggered rebels from the Clergy if you seize land
  • The mission “Religious Peace” gives permanently +1 Max Tolerance of Heretics and Heathens
  • Catholic and Protestant “Defender of the True Faith” give you a modifier which increases the Tolerance of True Faith by 1, Manpower in True Faith provinces by 15% and Imperial Authority Growth Modifier by 25%. It is active until you change your religion.

There is one mission I want to go into further detail: the mission “The Religious League” requires you to participate in the League War (or complete the fallback if the League War is impossible due to non-existent HRE). While for the Catholic side it is completed when the League War never fires, the Protestant mission requires that it happens.

Well, there are moments where the AI refuses to convert to Protestantism due to their position as Elector, even though 90% of their land is Protestant. Fortunately the mission “The Protestant Sword” covers you in that regard. By having a Protestant HRE ally who is either an elector or has 100 development you can complete this mission and unlock a decision which lets you force the formation of the Religious League. Because of that the Protestant mission “The Protestant Sword” unlocks a special decision which… “motivates” your fellow Protestant brethren to form a Religious League on their own.
religious_league_decision.png

religious_league_event.png

At long last we shall take a look at the final branch of the flavor missions: the military branch. Two parts played a major role in the military history of Sweden: the Finnish Hakkapeliitta and the Carolean units. The mission “The Hakkapeliitta” unlocks for you the special Hakkapeliitta mercenary company which costs no Army Professionalism to hire:
hakkapeliitta_cavalry.png

Note: The merc company has 100% Cavalry to Infantry Ratio because it does NOT take the value from your own government into account. This is only an issue for merc companies which consist of over 50% cavalry, so other mercenary companies do not require this modifier.

The mission “Reform the Military” has three ways of completion: the first one can be done by patience as you just have to wait until Mil Tech 19 and have 40 Army Tradition. The second way is a little bit faster as you need to hit 75 Absolutism.
However, most players will probably go for the third way which is a lot more difficult to achieve, but can be done before the Age of Absolutism:
  • Gain 15 Mil Power per month
  • Have 800 Military Power (is affected by All Power Modifiers)
  • Have a Level 3 Military Advisor
  • Completed at least one Military Idea Group
Completing this mission by this way will cost you mentioned Military Power.

These are some hard conditions, but the reward makes pain worth it:
allotment_system_event.png
The Carolean unit is not fully implemented just yet in the game so bear with me for the lack of screenshots, but at least I can talk a little bit about how the unit works. The Carolean unit is an infantry only unit which you can only recruit in Swedish or Finnish provinces and the amount of how many you can recruit scales with the development of your Swedish and Finnish provinces. The Carolean infantry has the normal costs of an Infantry unit right now - so without any modifiers it costs 10 Ducats.
Of course a unique unit also requires unique modifiers to make them worth their effort: the Carolean unit deals 25% more Shock Damage and receives -20% Morale Damage. That’s it. The only downside this unit has is that the amount of Carolean you can recruit is heavily limited by the dev of your Swedish and Finnish development with 20 development of a Swedish or Finnish province equalling 1 Carolean Regiment.

The mission “Drill the Caroleans” also unlocks two special Noble privileges which modify how your Caroleans fight for you too.
carolean_modifiers.png

Note: “Morale Damage” should be here in Green. It is already fixed internally, but I didn’t have the time to update my version of the game. Also these modifiers only affect Carolean units.

Keep in mind that all the numbers are still work in progress. The Carolean presented here might get the nerf hammer before they get released.

With that being said, that was the content for Sweden!

Due to the extent of this Dev Diary, the free content part will be more of a teaser for next week:
new_monarchy_reforms.png
That was it for this week! Next week we will dive into the content for Norway.
Until then I wish you all a nice week!
 
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Overall a great DD about Sweden. Will be my first country to play when the DLC is released.

However, if there's one thing to gripe about, it's the Caroleans. As has been pointed out by others, they weren't a small elite force so it feels odd to depict them that way. I'm not expert on the game and how to balance things, but I'd rather see a bonus modifier for all Swedish infantry when the mission is completed.
 
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Great DD @Ogele ! I have some questions not regarding only Sweden, but other, more general things:
1) Can you now form Catholic Prussia? Asking this in case you wanna go down the Prussian Kingdom mission chain, but still be Prussia and stay loyal to the holy father?
2) any changes regarding to Gotland? It'll be cool if there would be an event allowing you to play as the pirate king Erik on pirate Gotland
3) You mentioned a requirement for the Sami people is them to have your religion, does that mean most of them start of pagan now, as it was historically the case afaik?
4) On the topic of Pagans, any options to restorw the Old Ways as one of the Scandinavians? Seems like a fun option for the player and Norse is a fleshed out religion sadly only obtainable through CNs
5) I do hope Jamtland gets some love too, as it was factually an independent peasants republic by 1444
6) Are you guys still up for naval doctrine suggestions? Got an idea for Venice (and possibly Genoa):
The Venetian Armada
"Our glorious armada is one of the first armies to utilize gunpowder on our ships and our system of naval dockyards, armouries and chandlers gives us the ability to rapidly repair losses"
-Ship building speed -35%
-Canons per galley +10%
(Numbers can and likely should be tweaked)
 
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I was kind of hoping for a Peasants estate.

[Caroleans] and this is why we need a peasant estate, nobility has nothing to do with caroleans, they were a professional army of farmers which was established after Carl XI crushed the power of the nobility and made himself absolut monarch, caroleans should honestly buff max absolutism, and decrease noble influence
There are no plans for a new peasant estate at this moment, as this would mean a lot of new coding and scripting, and we're still very focused on fixing existing issues in the base game and trying to improve its performance, as I explained on the 1.34 Roadmap a few weeks ago. ;)
 
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So there are ~50 missions for Denmark ~50 for Sweden, is it a new policy of 50 missions a tag (so 50 SCA missions)? BTW I don't like branching missions (and they are ugly) if the tag's missions can be made based on tag's history. They fit though if sth like holy horde or other fantasy content appears. I like though missions with different approach and different rewards (as swedish mission of subjugation of POL) and branching missions could be done the same way.

1)Norse religion can be added in inland provinces of Sweden and Norway (Jokkmok, Lappland, Jamtland)
- I read lately they were converted in ~16th century as these places were rather remote and hard to get to them. Even some Swedish northern, coastal provinces were mostly inhabited by pagans but later on as there started to be new cities and towns (& trade companies) estabilished then the catholics became majority (IIRC Vasterbotten and Rovaniemi).

2)Finnmark & Kola's prov. (and maybe some other's) faith could be changed to animism (as it was not long ago conquered or was to be conquered from Sapmi).

3)Scanian dialect could also be added if not at the beginning then later when southern Scandinavia is owned by Sweden. Hey OPM rigan germanic culture is being added (FUR DEUTSCHLAND!) so don't leave other culture groups raw compared to germanic...

4)Any rework of other elective monarchies in Europe? So (among others) Bohemia and Hungary don't start with ahistorical feudal government reform but with kind of elective monarchy (like Mameluk gov?). In the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem however, the kingship was partially elected and partially hereditary.

5) Add naval doctrine that allows using marines.

6)Change Scandinavia's capital from Stockholm to Kalmar (or make it a decision).

7)Will Stora Kopparberg (Falun Mine), Skane market and The Sound Toll become great projects? And will Falun Mine be placed in the correct province?

8) Finland could start as a march of Sweden as there was a border fief of Viborg (1320-1534)

9) Karelia could also be added on map as the city of Kem, Russia (prov. 1776 White Karelia) got in novgorodian hands in 1450

10)Change the description of ivory as now many people say "Whaat, ivory in Greenland? elephants?!" Write something about walrus tusks. Though it could be some sort of achievement "Greenland's Elephants" - as Iceland have highest market share of ivory
 
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Two missions and a special mercenary cavalry unit.

Yeah, that's about what I expected following the afterthought Karelian ideas a few diaries back.
Nice that there's slightly more interaction with the Sami, who are likely still marked as "shamanist" in the files but that was made into the Fetishist religions so...I highly doubt we will see a Shamanist religion for them so maybe make them generic animists? Them potentially being Fetishist is not quite right. Barebones is a word that comes to mind.

Immersion here means a certain kind of immersion and a focus which is so far firmly in the Scandinavian direction, with a good(if fantastical in parts) Baltic side.
A shame and disappointment that Fennoscandia is once again relegated to the sidelines, even in an Immersion Pack focusing around the broader region.

Then again, I'm more than happy to be proven wrong by further dev diaries, even if I've learned to temper my expectations.
 
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The best thing about this?

Carolean Infantry is a new Special Unit Type. There's no way to mod in new Special Units, you can only alter and repurpose existing ones, so getting a new one is a great boon for the strained resource pool of Anbennar :D
 
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Now I dont want EU5. Now I want more DLCs like this xD
It seems like we wish for very different things. At least you are happy.
 
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Looking forward to these new missions, looks great. I wonder what the Integrate Sami mission is about, will Sami start as a vassal? Will the culture group be removed from the Scandinavian group and it will need to be accepted? Will it start with high autonomy and when it's low you can complete the mission?
 
"Note: Support Independence is becoming part of this DLC."

Is this just badly worded or will players now only be able to support independence if they own this dlc?
 
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mercenary company which costs no Army Professionalism to hire:
Geez, with all these new merc companies that cost no professionalism to hire, maybe linking the two mechanics in a way that discourages touching mercs (and makes admin ideas feel half useless) or turns the entire thing into a manpower bank wasn't the best plan and should be revisited.

Or, you know, I can continue to play Switzerland and get confused about getting professionalism by participating in the Hundred Years War combined with getting my own merc company by being nice with the pope.
 
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Probably a buff to discipline and infantry combat, as they are definitely not op :)
I personally don't want them to change. Unless to give them 7.5 discipline instead of 5. Just to stand out from the crowd and to commit to the op. I'd give Otto back it's extra discipline as well just to get my chunky end game boss back. Balance pfft. There is yuan, mughals and now teuton horde.

It's wild and I love it.
 
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"Note: Support Independence is becoming part of this DLC."

Is this just badly worded or will players now only be able to support independence if they own this dlc?
Some mechanics are unlocked if you own either one DLC or the other. This will be one of them. You can still get Support Independence without this DLC
 
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Another Special Unit Type! I am so hyped! On that note-

For the Modders out there (including me), is it possible to/are you going to add support for Modding Custom Unit Types such as the Cawa, Streltsky, etc? It is one of the major shortcomings of modding eu4 and it would be so awesome to be able to create our own custom unit types!
 
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