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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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5) Jamtland (and Viborg - mentioning them because I know that somebody will request them too) will not be a tag for 1.34. That's all I can say about this topic.
Intriguing. For Viborg particularly, could there be a Hanseatic and/or Pomeranian mission to control the province, as there is with Novgorod and Gotland — given the Pomeranian crown historically had a stake in its trade?
 
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"Note: Support Independence is becoming part of this DLC."

Seems an odd choice to take an existing feature of the game and lock it behind a pay wall.
This was some really bad wording from my part and I am sorry for causing some unnecessary headaches with it.
What I actually meant is that "Support Independence" is a DLC feature, which can be unlocked by the newest Scandinavia/Baltic DLC too. So if you own either Conquest of Paradise, El Dorado or the newest DLC you have access to it.
In other words: for anybody, who has one of the older DLCs already, nothing will change with Support of Independence when 1.34 gets released.
 
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Will we still have support independence with the other DLC that has it? (Most likely going to get this one anyway but still) never mind we will.
 
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So -
While a lot of people are posting about other unrelated stuff, lets go back to the DD

I understand, that a new estate would be some work, but it would have been a big chance and very flavorful to have a skandinavian only estate (so also a seller for the DLC, so its not feeling missions and art only for some people)
Is there no possiblity to just change an existing estate code?

The mission system looks great. What I see is, that (also with the danish one) there are way more missions then before and always now a branch about a specific optional part (religion) what is nice. I also really like the third way of humanist!
(Still feel that reformed should also be a similar option - what branch will you get if you chose to get reformed?) (or norse.... still hopes for next week :) )


While you post DDs about missions it would be a good information about how the AI is using them now ( I know you said you'll talk about it in a later DD, but it would be good to know how the missions are actually used before the mission DDs.) - if the AI is not using the missions on purpos a lot of stuff will never be seen outside that the player is playing that country what would be a shame.
 
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2 small suggestions:

As there are hopefully some plans for finnland, gotland and island: Please don't let this be just a mission for the player or even worse, an active "release a vasall" decicion, as we would hardly see this country spawn, and never if we don't play as the overlord.

Similar to existing events I suggest history events over the game with 4 options that will pop up once (or give a little event chain)

1. Option: Supress the national movement (get unrest or spawn rebells) (AI pick this 80%)
2. Option: Release as a vasall (AI pick this 15%)
3. Option: Release as a free country (AI pick this 5%)
4. Option: Release and play as (player only)

if any of the 1-3 is picked it would be great to have an optional information event/popup for other interested nations. There are more then enough good historic pre-conditions to fire one of the events.

With this you would add (without an even better eventchain) 3 simple events that would add a lot of dynamic map changes. They will be not that common, so the map and the game feels "fresh" also if you're not playing any of this countries. As a player its always most fun to see the world "develop" around yourself different so its not feeling like the player is the only one doing decisions.
 
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Thanks for all the constructive comments. My apologies for the rather late response, it was a rather busy day for me.
The Q&A is very appreciated, despite people like me being a bit bummed and negative.
We currently are experimenting with the Carolean. It is highly possible that during the development process that their role gets reversed, making them into powerful infantry army which you have en masse, but your force limit is highly reduced.
With the next Dev Diary I will post an update regarding the Carolean units.
That...would be a nice abstraction that fits with history. Interested to see where that falls.
Karelia might become a releasable tag. No promise on that though.
A bit of a 50/50 for a releasable Karelia. One could argue it either way, but if you do decide for a releasable tag Käkisalmi(Kexholm or Korela), Sortavala, Aunus, Äänislinna(Petrozavodsk) and Kem would be the places that might have a core. Käkisalmi was mentioned as the second largest town in Novgorod Republic(it would have been a fairly important trading hub due to it's location) but I'm skeptical of that.
It was a larger fortified town for sure before all the wars and fires severely depleted the population by 1800.
During a Swedish-Novgorodian war in 1314, a small Karelian force re-captured their fortress from the representatives of Novgorod. They invited Swedes to keep it against Novgorod; however, the Novgorodians reconquered the fortress. The fortress was confirmed as belonging to Novgorod in the treaty of Nöteborg of 1323.
Sure sounds like some separatist rebels to me! Jokes aside, the Karelians had some influence and agency at least before the fall of Novgorod to Muscovy when the lands were given to boyars who naturally levied taxes and serfdom on the populace.
 
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I did the math so correct me if I am wrong, but it should be feasible (but incredibly unlikely) to achieve it:
  • +3 base line
  • +1 from a Noble's Privilege
  • +3 from level 3 Mil Advisor (4 and 5 are of the table as they would require a DLC)
  • +1 from at least 50 Power Projection
  • +0-6 from your monarch
So in the end you would require a ruler with 6 military skill to achieve. Granted, 15 is too high so we will tune down to 12 or 13 probably. The premise was that Caroleans shouldn't be seen on the battle field until the Age of Absolutism unless the player focuses on the military as much as possible.
Your math is wrong. 3+1+3+1+6=14. You can tell that the right side can't be 15 because the left side has an even amount of odd numbers (two 1's and two 3's).
 
If there will be a vacation in July for Tinto (and last three years it was in that month) than we can expect this in late August or early September.
If i understood it correctly, that july vacation in past years was a swedish thing. Since tinto is in spain, i am not sure if there will be a july vacation.
 
Are you going to go through every unimportant nordic country before you finally reach Iceland or more importantly, the Faroe Islands???

I want to form the best Scandinavia with the Faroes or go full colonial native Icelander where they join the Skrælingjar
 
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I agree with you that a Peasant Estate would have made (some) sense for the Scandinavian countries as the peasantry was notable influential.
With that being said, the addition of a new estate (which would be not exclusive to Scandinavia itself alone - after all peasants are present where settlements exist) requires a lot of time and effort, as @Pavía has already pointed out, so we preferred to expand the government reforms for monarchies, republics and theocracies instead as part of the free content of the update.

The reason an estate ought to be exclusive to Sweden-Finland, maybe Norway too, isn't that peasants merely existed, but that they had formal political power as a recognized estate of the realm, and were much less subject to the nobility but rather free subjects of the crown compared to most of Europe.

We currently are experimenting with the Carolean. It is highly possible that during the development process that their role gets reversed, making them into powerful infantry army which you have en masse, but your force limit is highly reduced.
With the next Dev Diary I will post an update regarding the Carolean units.

I really think they would be better represented as a form of drill bonus with recruitment limitations, training time and force limit especially. The tremänningaregementen could also be interesting as a form of emergency reserve that would maybe sacrifice development and not professionalism?

Caroleans should also arguably be restricted to Lutheran Sweden, since fanatic belief was a big part of their function. They aren't called Talibans of the north for no reason(arguably stupid and reductive reasons, but it's fun). Maybe even a unique church aspect for shock damage and morale?

6) We collected some Naval Ideas from the last DD - a new doctrine for Venice is one of them. However, I appreciate your idea - let's hope the programmers are up to add new "cannons for <ship type>" modifier.

It would be hard to find a good cause for existence for it, but a similar doctrine for Sweden representing the Archipelago Navy/Navy of the Army could be fun. Probably focusing more on ship strength or fighting ability rather than construction speed though. It's tricky because it only came to be historically in a very late stage in the game after significant Swedish losses to Russia in the Baltic, and at that stage you should be enjoying Dominum Maris Baltici and have little need for keeping Russian galleys out of your waters.

No. Denmark and Norway also have this as a reward in their mission trees when they complete their "Scandinavian Part". So for Denmark the mission "Unite Scandinavia" would allow you to form Scandinavia before tech 20 too.

Hot take, but it would be interesting if Norway's focus was on dominion of the North Sea and beyond rather than Scandinavian, or at least a choice for it. As a sort of competitor overseas to the Dutch or English, not to mention a challenge to the British Isles.



Thank you so much for the comprehensive response, I do want to poke you again about Gothenburg though.

Something else that came on my mind, is the rather extensive expropriations and taxations done by Swedish Kings, and the accompanying strong civil service of Axel Oxenstierna especially that could deserve more spotlight. The Dacke revolt is in there, but a disaster featuring a nobility bloated on riches from a successful war that can be checked by a strong crown taking all their stuff, akin to the reductions of Charles the XI would be great fun, but probably a reach.

Speaking of nobility, our mass importing of foreign, especially Scottish and German, nobility as well as the strengthening of the Finnish one for the same reasons because our own could literally not breed enough officers to keep up with the wars would make for great flavor, but probably also a reach.
 
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Since we're getting a northern Europe dlc now after they finally made jewish a playable religion in origins. Will we get any events for Jewish in northern Europe?

Maybe and event in Poland maybe an event in Poland for Katherine weigel's exicution (she converted to jewish and was exicuted) or the rise of shtettles in Lithuania?
 
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We currently are experimenting with the Carolean. It is highly possible that during the development process that their role gets reversed, making them into powerful infantry army which you have en masse, but your force limit is highly reduced.
With the next Dev Diary I will post an update regarding the Carolean units.
Mine own two eyes are blessed to have read this! Even if nothing comes of it, I'm really glad to hear Caroleans as shown in this DD are not set in stone.
 
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