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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 7th of March 2023 - All Blue

Hello and welcome to another Development Diary! Today we will be talking about the new, yet undisclosed content for Europa Universalis IV: Domination, the new expansion that was announced yesterday!

We are very excited to show you the final features that we will include. But let's start by addressing some of the countries that may be on the list of what could be considered Early Modern Great Powers, the main theme of Domination, and that will not receive new content in this expansion. First of all, you may have noticed (and widely requested) new content to be included for two of the ‘historical winners’ in the Middle East during this time period, the Gunpowder Empires of Persia and the Mughals, and also for some other ‘historical losers’ in the area, as the Mamluks. To be clear, they were left out of this expansion on purpose, since we have future plans for the Middle East, so you can expect us to create new content for them in the future. Some of you may have also wondered why countries like Venice, Netherlands or Austria are not in this expansion. You’ll see later that some of them have received some extra flavor in Domination; but, apart from that, today we want to show some countries that we decided to focus on, and that received more extra content, which are:
  • Portugal
  • Prussia
  • Korea
On top of that, we will also be talking about the following new content:

  • Naval Special Units
  • Government Reforms
  • Estate Privileges
With that being said, let’s start with a country that I promised a couple of weeks ago would receive new content - Portugal! Or do we call it now Bluetugal? Anyway, we have reworked some of the older features of the country a bit. First, there was a redesign of its mission tree. Let’s take a look at its new shape:

Portugal 1.png

We reorganized it for better consistency. On the upper part, all the missions related to Exploration and Colonization. We reworked some of their rewards, improved the flow of some of them, and added a few more as well, after reading your feedback in the forums over the past couple of weeks:

Portugal 2.jpg

Portugal 3.jpg

Portugal 4.jpg

‘Sails of Exploration’ and ‘Charter the Seas’ add some flavor to the early Explorations made by Portugal.

Portugal 5.jpg

Portugal 6.jpg

Portugal 7.jpg

‘Clash with the Ottomans’ adds a mid to late game objective regarding the Portuguese push for Hegemony in the Indian Ocean, also adding an extra buff to the Portuguese Marines.

Portugal 8.jpg

Portugal 9.jpg

Portugal 10.jpg

‘Reform the Navy’ unlocks Caravels and Galleons special ships for Portugal, while ‘Lusitanian Empire’ makes for a more interesting reward if completing the lower half content of the Portuguese mission tree.

Apart from that, we also have created two unique Government Reforms for Portugal. The first one is a Tier 1 reform (meaning that Portugal will start with it):

Portugal 11.jpg

While the second one is a Tier 5 unique Military reform, which opens a new decision on top of the reform modifier:

Portugal 12.jpg

Portugal 13.png

To complete the rebalance of Portugal, we also took into account your suggestions for the Order of Avis, and changed their sailors for a more defensive approach for them:

14 Portugal 14.jpg

And we also added a couple of Salt resources in Portugal:

15 Portugal 15.jpg

Now, let’s move to the Prussia rework, which is presented by @PDX Big Boss !



Hey everyone, Prussia has long been a great and fun nation to play as, in Single and (especially) Multiplayer. As we revamp the content of the Great Powers in Domination, I saw it fit to revisit Prussia to some degree and give them a touch-up to accompany the upcoming Expansion. The idea behind this content is that Brandenburg feels like it’s surrounded by very powerful neighbors and rarely is allowed to grow and evolve into Prussia. This is especially true in Multiplayer scenarios, where the Polish, Scandinavian and Austrian players end up bullying little Brandenburg out of key provinces, such as the areas of Eastern and Western Prussia or Silesia etc. Alongside the new Prussian Blue color, I worked through nearly every single mission, providing new requirements and rewards, estate privileges, mechanics and more! Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:

15.5 Blue Prussia.png

Starting off, Reclaim Neumark will offer a new dynamic reward as shown below:

16. Reclaim Neumark Mission.png

Depending on your relationship with the Holy Roman Emperorship, conquering provinces outside of the Empire’s domain will yield a different bonus!

The mission ‘Ansbach Succession’ is now tied to a unique new “Timed Reward” challenge. Should you accept the union with Ansbach in the ‘Franconian Hohenzollerns’ event, you will trigger the mission’s timed challenge, starting the countdown. You will have 5 years at your disposal to reunite the Franconian lands, enjoying a powerful new reward if you are victorious:

17. Franconian Conquest Timed Reward.png

However, as the reward is very powerful, failure will also set you back a good deal as your lands in Franconia will declare independence and in return worsen your relations with your neighbors.

Disaster in Franconia.png

This is an experimental feature due to the fact that I feel like it's a good bit of a challenge for those who wish it. Please keep in mind you can circumvent this feature should you feel like you don’t wanna deal with it!

The mission ‘The Balance of Power’ will empower the Brandenburg Gate Great Project (for owners of Leviathan) with the following reward:

Balance of Power Mission.png

‘Conquer Greater Poland’ will grant the following reward should you complete it with 200 Development in the Polish region, granting you access to a very powerful Age Ability, as the de facto ruler of the Polish domain:

Conquer Greater Poland Mission.png

To be clear, you won’t need to complete the mission DURING the Age of Reformation!

Lastly, as far as Brandenburg-accessible content is concerned, a small pet-peeve of mine has always been the canals. They always felt somewhat underutilized and I would love to see them being built more often as they can provide a strategic advantage and a dynamic change to wars, especially in Multiplayer. To (at least partially) address that, the mission ‘Construct the Kiel Canal’ has had its requirements and rewards changed, to spawn the Canal upon completion:

Construct the Kiel Canal.png

Note: An idea I had during development would be to have the ability of closing and opening the canal, either in general or towards foes but alas, it was not meant to be. More on Great Projects at a later DD.

Moving on to Prussia, they will gain access to some new missions as per the Emperor DLC dictates. What is important to note here however is that Militarization as we know it , as far as Prussia is concerned, has changed.

Prussia now starts with a new version of it, called Early Prussian Militarization:

Militarization 1.png

A few easily-digestible points here:

  • The first level of Militarization is weaker than the 1.34 equivalent.
  • Only Prussia will have access to this, everyone else that uses Militarization will keep the 1.34 iteration.
  • I would like to reinstate the decay of Militarization so it’s not a button you press 10 times and then forget about for the rest of the campaign, that is not very engaging. The idea is that you should always weigh your Mil power and think “Do I want to get a temporary boost, cap my Militarization or boost it ?” especially during wars and crucial battles.
  • Prussia does not need a special unit per-se. The entire army should be bolstered by this mechanic instead, not a few select parts of it. The army IS the special unit.
And how will this mechanic evolve as the game goes on? By completing these 2 missions:

23 Army Reforms and An Army with a State.png

Each will upgrade the mechanic, not only by unlocking more powerful bonuses but also adding new interactions as we will observe further down.

23 Army Reforms.png

25 Militarization 2.png

So the second level is essentially similar to 1.34 Militarization. The only difference here should be the decay, notice how the jump from the first to the second level also increased the decay of it.

Which leaves us with the final level of Militarization. If you are an enemy of Prussia, I would highly advise you to NOT let them reach this stage:

26 Prussia Mil.png

Note: these icons are a WIP!

Scharnhorst Manuevers Button.png

Reform the Military Manual Button.png

At this point I should note that these numbers are very much a WIP and I welcome all feedback, I love Prussia and I want this evolution of the Militarization mechanic to be as interesting and usable as possible. So as far as this new mechanic goes, feel free to chime in regarding stuff like the bonuses themselves, how much they should cost, the decay of each level etc.

Before we move on to another topic, I would like to thank Stiopa for providing me with a few new flavor events, which I plan on adding as part of the base game! And now, @Ogele is going to show you the new content for Korea!



Heya!

While my two colleagues cover two “minor” great powers of Europe, I figured it would be nice to expand Korea a little bit with Domination as all of its neighbors were given extensive overhauls. Generally speaking, I have always been more or less happy with its mission tree, though some of its mission rewards and requirements are in need of a revisit which will happen over the next few days.

With that being said, I still felt like Korea deserves something to make it stand out amongst the hordes of the North, the Empire to its west and Samurai to the east. As such it was only fitting that they receive their own unique Tier 1 reform:

korea_reform.png

korean_focuses.png

Its starting privilege - the “Inward Perfectionism” - has been turned into a three-button government ability for Korea, where they can set their path of how they interact with the world. As the community seems to dislike the idea that Korea expands, the AI will always choose Inward Focus and is prohibited from declaring any wars while they have the Inward Focus.

However, due to the nature of EU4, having only the Inward Focus is not necessarily a lot of fun for many players. As such, Korea also has access to the Outward Focus - one which focuses on interacting but not fighting with outside nations - and an Expansion Focus - the epitome of the EU4 gameplay loop. You can select a new focus every 20 years or when you get a new ruler.

Additionally to this, Korea’s ideas have been revisited. It was promised in 1.33 that they would get an update and it finally has happened:

Code:
KOR_ideas = {
    start = {
        build_cost = -0.1
        land_morale = 0.1
    }
    bonus = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }
    trigger = {
        tag = KOR
    }
    free = yes
    kor_uijeongbu = {
        advisor_cost = -0.1
        all_estate_loyalty_equilibrium = 0.05
    }
    metal_movable_type = {
        adm_tech_cost_modifier = -0.05
        innovativeness_gain = 0.5
    }
    choi_mu_seon_gunpower_engines = {
        fire_damage = 0.1
    }
    korean_artisanery = {
        prestige = 1
        development_cost = -0.05
    }
    hyanyak_system = {
        production_efficiency = 0.10
    }
    geobukseon = {
        ship_durability = 0.1
        naval_morale = 0.05
        has_geobukseon = yes
    }
    kyujanggak = {
        idea_cost = -0.1
    }
}

Two things to be mentioned here: the Hangul Alphabet is a big part of Korean history and technology, and while it has been removed from the ideas, it has not been removed from Korea itself.

31 alphabet.png

Note: there is also a revoke decision if you want to get rid of the increased unrest.

The Hopae System itself has become a decision too:

32 hopae.png

The Korean ideas also unlock a new special naval unit for Korea: the Geobukseon Galley:

33 geobukseon.png

The amount of Geobukseon you can construct scales with Navy Tradition. At 100 Navy Tradition, 50% of your Naval Force Limit can be made of Geobukseon ships.

Some other small additions for Korea are the additions of the Tripitaka Koreana and the Righteous Army military reform. Starting with the former, the Tripitaka Koreana is a permanent province modifier which is quite similar to the Emerald Buddha in Chiang Mai. Located in Jinju, the modifier has the following effects:

34 tripitaka_koreana.png

Note: Not shown is the Karma decay for Buddhistic nations.

It is possible for another country of the Eastern Religion Group to steal Tripitaka if the province gets occupied by outside forces:

tripitaka_stolen.png

In order to counteract this, the owner of the Tripitaka Koreana has two decisions which reinforce the defense of this collection.

36 tripitaka_defense.png

37 tripitaka_evacuation.png

Note: the latter decision is only available in a defensive war.

Finally let us tackle the unique military reform of Korea: the Righteous Army. Once just a mission in their mission tree, it is now a government reform in the fifth tier (which I will go into detail later) with the following effects:

38 righteous_army.png

Once selected, you will have access to the following decision when you are in a defensive war OR 10 provinces of your culture have been occupied:

righteous_army_decision.png

The Righteous Army is an emergency mercenary unit with only 10% of its cost and can be recruited like any free company can be:

40 righteous_army_merc.png
Note: I am aware that the Righteous Army is basically a force of peasants which defend their homeland from invaders. I excluded them from the Army Professionalism cost as it would be a bit awkward from a gameplay perspective to be punished for recruiting a special mercenary company with such a niche.

Once peace has returned you get the following event:

41 righteous_army_peace.png

That is it for Korea for the time being. I want to express my gratitude towards Estaloy who helped me a lot with giving good ideas for Korea and as well as giving inspiration for many other aspects for 1.35. I wouldn't have gotten so far without her support.

Unlike other nations, Korea is one of the states which I personally would like to expand with every patch a little bit as there are still a few things to cover such as highly factionalized infighting. However, time is of the essence, and as such we have to move on now to another topic.

Korea, England, Portugal and Castile are not the only countries that have gained access to new special naval units, the new feature that we are implementing in Domination.

Countries of the Venetian or the Ligurian cultures have access to the following Tier 5 government reform:

42 merchant_arsenal.png

43 galleass.png


Galleasses are similar to Geobukseon as the amount of available galleasses scales with your navy tradition. However, you can only construct them in provinces that have either a dock, drydock, shipyard or grand shipyard.

The other special naval unit went to the Dutch and Flemish countries which have one of the three Dutch governments (more about them later).

44 VOC.png

The VOC Indiamen is even for special units extraordinary as it is the only non-transport ship that can actually transport land units. Combined with their ability to protect trade and their additional cannons, the VOC Indiamen are a master of utility. However, you only have 20% of your naval force limit available for you. Any additional force limit available for VOC is increased by your Trade Efficiency. At 100% Trade Efficiency you would be able to recruit 25% more of your total naval force limit as VOC Indiamen.

Now, let’s move to the new Government Reforms and Estate Privileges that we created!

A big part of 1.34’s success was the introduction of many new government reforms which expanded the choices a player could make during their campaign. 1.35 and Domination will continue this trend with the addition of a new government tier and more tier 1 reforms all across the world.

Let’s get started with the new tier!

45 new_tier_5.png

46 tier_5_reforms.png

Note: These reforms and the tier are part of the 1.35 free update. It is a shared tier between Monarchies, Republics, Theocracies and Tribal governments.

You might have noticed that none of these reforms give “hard” land military modifiers. The general idea was that the generic military reforms should be somewhat of a utility reform for your army. Depending on the situation you might want to pick a different reform.

The three exceptions to these are the mercenary as well as the naval reforms. The former gives mercenary discipline in order to encourage active usage of mercenary units for combat (this is especially directed at players like me who love to park their merc units on a fort and forget about them until a siege is over) while the latter is more for the role play aspect.

With that being said, Domination itself brings additional reforms for the 5th tier. These reforms, however, are locked behind specific culture groups in order to give variety to the world. Here are are some examples:

47 specific_reforms.png

Note: As usual, neither numbers nor modifiers are final.

Some reforms enable certain mechanics unique to the government reform. For example, completing the mercenary ideas unlocks the following government reform:

48 elite_mercs.png

49 meme_build.png

Note: The actual price is 0.1 Years of Income.

Now that we have covered the tier 5 reforms, let us return to Tier 1. While the addition of many additional reforms was highly praised, we still were feeling that a bit more variety is missing. As Domination is already a DLC focusing on a global scope, it was only fitting that we introduce new Tier 1 reforms in order to make regions have something to look forward to with the upcoming update and DLC:

50 starting_tier_1.png

A few other new Tier 1 get unlocked as you play through your campaign and form other countries:

51 formables_tier_1.png

Additionally, Domination will unlock some “over-the-top” government reforms for achieving a difficult-ish feat:

special_formables_tier_1.png

Last but not least, Domination enables two new generic Tier 1 reforms for Monarchies and Republics:

52 elective.png

Whenever a new ruler ascends the throne you get the following event pop-up:

53 election_event.png

You always have the option to choose one from your nobility to become the new ruler. Additionally, if you border a country that is not independent, has the Nobility (or its Indian equivalent) estates, is a monarchy, is not at war with you and is not in a regency then you get the choice to elect one of the said country’s relatives to your new ruler. However, this specific ruler is the only one whose stats you cannot see before.

The event will always pick the most developed country as the origin of this foreign noble. Of course I want to point out that this is subject to changes.

The other reform is one for the Republics:

54 civic.png

Unlike other Republics, this reform tries to mix things up by introducing max terms for a ruler to rule.

55 max_terms.png

Of course this stands to the antithesis of the optimal play of Republics where you want to re-elect the same guy over and over again. Because of that, this reform aims for making modifiers which increase the length of terms and more stats for random candidates more attractive by giving new rulers a new lifetime long modifier which makes choosing a new candidate:

56 candidate_bonus.png

There are in total 15 modifiers, 5 for each category (ADM/DIP/MIL). Here is the list of possible modifiers to get from your ruler:

Code:
civic_republicanism_focus_government = {
    reform_progress_growth = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_expansion = {
    core_creation = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_technology = {
    idea_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_stability = {
    stability_cost_modifier = -0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_religion = {
    global_missionary_strength = 0.01
}


civic_republicanism_focus_diplomacy = {
    diplomatic_reputation = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_court = {
    all_estate_influence_modifier = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_trade = {
    trade_efficiency = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_subjects = {
    diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_development = {
    development_cost = -0.05
}


civic_republicanism_focus_defensive = {
    defensiveness = 0.2
}
civic_republicanism_focus_sieges = {
    siege_ability = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_leaders = {
    leader_land_shock = 1
    leader_naval_shock = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_quality = {
    land_morale = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_naval = {
    naval_morale = 0.1
    global_ship_trade_power = 0.1
}

These were the government reforms, but I am not done yet. Domination also unlocks up to 60 new Estate Privileges, distributed amongst all the estates (Janissaries and Eunuchs not counted in). It would be a bit too much if I go into detail for every privilege, so instead I will showcase a set of privileges which can be expected for the major estates (Clergy, Burghers and Nobles) and then a few highlights for the more niche estates.

no_crownland_loss_from_deving.png

Every estate gains one privilege which allows you to develop your provinces without the affected estate to lose crown land. While this seems like a drawback for a few estates, for others like the Nobility which has access to Increased Levies or the Rajputs whose access to their special units is tied to the crown land they have it will be a powerful tool.

58 influence_scaling.png

Most estates will also gain access to a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the influence said estate has.

59 loyalty_scaling.png

Finally, there is a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the loyalty of your estate. So an estate with 100% Loyalty would give the full modifiers.

Now, you might have noticed that the last privilege has an “Estate Decision” or, synonymously called “Estate Action”. For those who did not play EUIV before 1.30: the estates used to have interactions that you can press in order to get a one-time effect from the estate. Some might even remember the old golden rule of giving the estates 80% influence and then demanding their support every 20 years for 200 Monarch Power.

Well, this has now returned in form of decisions that are unlocked by the estates:

estate_decisions.png

While other interactions have been reworked into an effect that interacts with your estate agendas.

61 minister_decision.png

While other interactions have been reworked into an effect which interacts with your estate agendas.

62 agenda_completer.png

Finally a few estate privileges from the less prevalent estates:

63 cossacks.png

64 hordes.png

And that’s all for today! Here @Pavía again! We hope you enjoy all this new content we have created for Europa Universalis IV: Domination. But on top of that, next week we will be talking about more new content we have created… In this case, free content! We are adding a fair amount of content to the previous DLCs and the base game as we wanted to give the gameplay even more depth and continue to expand some of the features that are included in them, and also as a reward for the large player base that continues to support Europa Universalis IV after almost 10 years of development. See you next week!

eu4-prussia-dd.png
 

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skyman100 said:
@Pavía can you tell us if Byz content is planned at all? Even if it hasn't been worked on other than the gov reform, a lot of people including myself would love to see them get a rework at some point even if it isn't this update.
Not in this update, we'll see if in the future (maybe in the Middle East update?...)

We pray!
 
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Interesting changes. Seems like a nerf to Brandenburg/Prussia, which I'm not sure was necessary. Yes, Prussia is a military powerhouse, but it doesn't really "blob" like the other great powers because of Germany/HRE making aggressive expansion tough and larger powers on all sides.
But the changes to Korea and Portugal look great.
 
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Although I'm pleased Scotland got a unique tier 1 reform, I'm really disappointed by the weak modifiers it gets compared to the other ones introduced. It definitely needs a buff.

Ireland for example gets +15% manpower, +5% morale damage, +5% all estates loyalty equilibrium and -15% reduction to cost of advisor with rulers culture (which will stack with their national ideas).

And Scotland gets +10% fort defense and +1 diplomatic reputation. Why such weak modifiers? Same with it's national ideas. Really weak. "Comets?" Come on guys PLEASE give Scotland something worthwhile.

Fingers still tightly crossed we'll get something in a coming dev diary.
 
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Hello and welcome to another Development Diary! Today we will be talking about the new, yet undisclosed content for Europa Universalis IV: Domination, the new expansion that was announced yesterday!

We are very excited to show you the final features that we will include. But let's start by addressing some of the countries that may be on the list of what could be considered Early Modern Great Powers, the main theme of Domination, and that will not receive new content in this expansion. First of all, you may have noticed (and widely requested) new content to be included for two of the ‘historical winners’ in the Middle East during this time period, the Gunpowder Empires of Persia and the Mughals, and also for some other ‘historical losers’ in the area, as the Mamluks. To be clear, they were left out of this expansion on purpose, since we have future plans for the Middle East, so you can expect us to create new content for them in the future. Some of you may have also wondered why countries like Venice, Netherlands or Austria are not in this expansion. You’ll see later that some of them have received some extra flavor in Domination; but, apart from that, today we want to show some countries that we decided to focus on, and that received more extra content, which are:
  • Portugal
  • Prussia
  • Korea
On top of that, we will also be talking about the following new content:

  • Naval Special Units
  • Government Reforms
  • Estate Privileges
With that being said, let’s start with a country that I promised a couple of weeks ago would receive new content - Portugal! Or do we call it now Bluetugal? Anyway, we have reworked some of the older features of the country a bit. First, there was a redesign of its mission tree. Let’s take a look at its new shape:


We reorganized it for better consistency. On the upper part, all the missions related to Exploration and Colonization. We reworked some of their rewards, improved the flow of some of them, and added a few more as well, after reading your feedback in the forums over the past couple of weeks:

View attachment 954221
View attachment 954222
View attachment 954223
‘Sails of Exploration’ and ‘Charter the Seas’ add some flavor to the early Explorations made by Portugal.

View attachment 954224
View attachment 954225
View attachment 954226
‘Clash with the Ottomans’ adds a mid to late game objective regarding the Portuguese push for Hegemony in the Indian Ocean, also adding an extra buff to the Portuguese Marines.

View attachment 954227
View attachment 954228
View attachment 954229
‘Reform the Navy’ unlocks Caravels and Galleons special ships for Portugal, while ‘Lusitanian Empire’ makes for a more interesting reward if completing the lower half content of the Portuguese mission tree.

Apart from that, we also have created two unique Government Reforms for Portugal. The first one is a Tier 1 reform (meaning that Portugal will start with it):


While the second one is a Tier 5 unique Military reform, which opens a new decision on top of the reform modifier:


To complete the rebalance of Portugal, we also took into account your suggestions for the Order of Avis, and changed their sailors for a more defensive approach for them:


And we also added a couple of Salt resources in Portugal:


Now, let’s move to the Prussia rework, which is presented by @PDX Big Boss !



Hey everyone, Prussia has long been a great and fun nation to play as, in Single and (especially) Multiplayer. As we revamp the content of the Great Powers in Domination, I saw it fit to revisit Prussia to some degree and give them a touch-up to accompany the upcoming Expansion. The idea behind this content is that Brandenburg feels like it’s surrounded by very powerful neighbors and rarely is allowed to grow and evolve into Prussia. This is especially true in Multiplayer scenarios, where the Polish, Scandinavian and Austrian players end up bullying little Brandenburg out of key provinces, such as the areas of Eastern and Western Prussia or Silesia etc. Alongside the new Prussian Blue color, I worked through nearly every single mission, providing new requirements and rewards, estate privileges, mechanics and more! Let’s take a look at some of the highlights:


Starting off, Reclaim Neumark will offer a new dynamic reward as shown below:

View attachment 954235
Depending on your relationship with the Holy Roman Emperorship, conquering provinces outside of the Empire’s domain will yield a different bonus!

The mission ‘Ansbach Succession’ is now tied to a unique new “Timed Reward” challenge. Should you accept the union with Ansbach in the ‘Franconian Hohenzollerns’ event, you will trigger the mission’s timed challenge, starting the countdown. You will have 5 years at your disposal to reunite the Franconian lands, enjoying a powerful new reward if you are victorious:


However, as the reward is very powerful, failure will also set you back a good deal as your lands in Franconia will declare independence and in return worsen your relations with your neighbors.

View attachment 954237
This is an experimental feature due to the fact that I feel like it's a good bit of a challenge for those who wish it. Please keep in mind you can circumvent this feature should you feel like you don’t wanna deal with it!

The mission ‘The Balance of Power’ will empower the Brandenburg Gate Great Project (for owners of Leviathan) with the following reward:


‘Conquer Greater Poland’ will grant the following reward should you complete it with 200 Development in the Polish region, granting you access to a very powerful Age Ability, as the de facto ruler of the Polish domain:

View attachment 954239
To be clear, you won’t need to complete the mission DURING the Age of Reformation!

Lastly, as far as Brandenburg-accessible content is concerned, a small pet-peeve of mine has always been the canals. They always felt somewhat underutilized and I would love to see them being built more often as they can provide a strategic advantage and a dynamic change to wars, especially in Multiplayer. To (at least partially) address that, the mission ‘Construct the Kiel Canal’ has had its requirements and rewards changed, to spawn the Canal upon completion:

View attachment 954241
Note: An idea I had during development would be to have the ability of closing and opening the canal, either in general or towards foes but alas, it was not meant to be. More on Great Projects at a later DD.

Moving on to Prussia, they will gain access to some new missions as per the Emperor DLC dictates. What is important to note here however is that Militarization as we know it , as far as Prussia is concerned, has changed.

Prussia now starts with a new version of it, called Early Prussian Militarization:


A few easily-digestible points here:

  • The first level of Militarization is weaker than the 1.34 equivalent.
  • Only Prussia will have access to this, everyone else that uses Militarization will keep the 1.34 iteration.
  • I would like to reinstate the decay of Militarization so it’s not a button you press 10 times and then forget about for the rest of the campaign, that is not very engaging. The idea is that you should always weigh your Mil power and think “Do I want to get a temporary boost, cap my Militarization or boost it ?” especially during wars and crucial battles.
  • Prussia does not need a special unit per-se. The entire army should be bolstered by this mechanic instead, not a few select parts of it. The army IS the special unit.
And how will this mechanic evolve as the game goes on? By completing these 2 missions:


Each will upgrade the mechanic, not only by unlocking more powerful bonuses but also adding new interactions as we will observe further down.


So the second level is essentially similar to 1.34 Militarization. The only difference here should be the decay, notice how the jump from the first to the second level also increased the decay of it.

Which leaves us with the final level of Militarization. If you are an enemy of Prussia, I would highly advise you to NOT let them reach this stage:


At this point I should note that these numbers are very much a WIP and I welcome all feedback, I love Prussia and I want this evolution of the Militarization mechanic to be as interesting and usable as possible. So as far as this new mechanic goes, feel free to chime in regarding stuff like the bonuses themselves, how much they should cost, the decay of each level etc.

Before we move on to another topic, I would like to thank Stiopa for providing me with a few new flavor events, which I plan on adding as part of the base game! And now, @Ogele is going to show you the new content for Korea!



Heya!

While my two colleagues cover two “minor” great powers of Europe, I figured it would be nice to expand Korea a little bit with Domination as all of its neighbors were given extensive overhauls. Generally speaking, I have always been more or less happy with its mission tree, though some of its mission rewards and requirements are in need of a revisit which will happen over the next few days.

With that being said, I still felt like Korea deserves something to make it stand out amongst the hordes of the North, the Empire to its west and Samurai to the east. As such it was only fitting that they receive their own unique Tier 1 reform:


Its starting privilege - the “Inward Perfectionism” - has been turned into a three-button government ability for Korea, where they can set their path of how they interact with the world. As the community seems to dislike the idea that Korea expands, the AI will always choose Inward Focus and is prohibited from declaring any wars while they have the Inward Focus.

However, due to the nature of EU4, having only the Inward Focus is not necessarily a lot of fun for many players. As such, Korea also has access to the Outward Focus - one which focuses on interacting but not fighting with outside nations - and an Expansion Focus - the epitome of the EU4 gameplay loop. You can select a new focus every 20 years or when you get a new ruler.

Additionally to this, Korea’s ideas have been revisited. It was promised in 1.33 that they would get an update and it finally has happened:

Code:
KOR_ideas = {
    start = {
        build_cost = -0.1
        land_morale = 0.1
    }
    bonus = {
        infantry_power = 0.1
    }
    trigger = {
        tag = KOR
    }
    free = yes
    kor_uijeongbu = {
        advisor_cost = -0.1
        all_estate_loyalty_equilibrium = 0.05
    }
    metal_movable_type = {
        adm_tech_cost_modifier = -0.05
        innovativeness_gain = 0.5
    }
    choi_mu_seon_gunpower_engines = {
        fire_damage = 0.1
    }
    korean_artisanery = {
        prestige = 1
        development_cost = -0.05
    }
    hyanyak_system = {
        production_efficiency = 0.10
    }
    geobukseon = {
        ship_durability = 0.1
        naval_morale = 0.05
        has_geobukseon = yes
    }
    kyujanggak = {
        idea_cost = -0.1
    }
}

Two things to be mentioned here: the Hangul Alphabet is a big part of Korean history and technology, and while it has been removed from the ideas, it has not been removed from Korea itself.

View attachment 954262
Note: there is also a revoke decision if you want to get rid of the increased unrest.

The Hopae System itself has become a decision too:


The Korean ideas also unlock a new special naval unit for Korea: the Geobukseon Galley:


The amount of Geobukseon you can construct scales with Navy Tradition. At 100 Navy Tradition, 50% of your Naval Force Limit can be made of Geobukseon ships.

Some other small additions for Korea are the additions of the Tripitaka Koreana and the Righteous Army military reform. Starting with the former, the Tripitaka Koreana is a permanent province modifier which is quite similar to the Emerald Buddha in Chiang Mai. Located in Jinju, the modifier has the following effects:

View attachment 954265
Note: Not shown is the Karma decay for Buddhistic nations.

It is possible for another country of the Eastern Religion Group to steal Tripitaka if the province gets occupied by outside forces:


In order to counteract this, the owner of the Tripitaka Koreana has two decisions which reinforce the defense of this collection.

View attachment 954267
View attachment 954268
Note: the latter decision is only available in a defensive war.

Finally let us tackle the unique military reform of Korea: the Righteous Army. Once just a mission in their mission tree, it is now a government reform in the fifth tier (which I will go into detail later) with the following effects:


Once selected, you will have access to the following decision when you are in a defensive war OR 10 provinces of your culture have been occupied:


The Righteous Army is an emergency mercenary unit with only 10% of its cost and can be recruited like any free company can be:

Note: I am aware that the Righteous Army is basically a force of peasants which defend their homeland from invaders. I excluded them from the Army Professionalism cost as it would be a bit awkward from a gameplay perspective to be punished for recruiting a special mercenary company with such a niche.

Once peace has returned you get the following event:


That is it for Korea for the time being. I want to express my gratitude towards Estaloy who helped me a lot with giving good ideas for Korea and as well as giving inspiration for many other aspects for 1.35. I wouldn't have gotten so far without her support.

Unlike other nations, Korea is one of the states which I personally would like to expand with every patch a little bit as there are still a few things to cover such as highly factionalized infighting. However, time is of the essence, and as such we have to move on now to another topic.

Korea, England, Portugal and Castile are not the only countries that have gained access to new special naval units, the new feature that we are implementing in Domination.

Countries of the Venetian or the Ligurian cultures have access to the following Tier 5 government reform:



Galleasses are similar to Geobukseon as the amount of available galleasses scales with your navy tradition. However, you can only construct them in provinces that have either a dock, drydock, shipyard or grand shipyard.

The other special naval unit went to the Dutch and Flemish countries which have one of the three Dutch governments (more about them later).


The VOC Indiamen is even for special units extraordinary as it is the only non-transport ship that can actually transport land units. Combined with their ability to protect trade and their additional cannons, the VOC Indiamen are a master of utility. However, you only have 20% of your naval force limit available for you. Any additional force limit available for VOC is increased by your Trade Efficiency. At 100% Trade Efficiency you would be able to recruit 25% more of your total naval force limit as VOC Indiamen.

Now, let’s move to the new Government Reforms and Estate Privileges that we created!

A big part of 1.34’s success was the introduction of many new government reforms which expanded the choices a player could make during their campaign. 1.35 and Domination will continue this trend with the addition of a new government tier and more tier 1 reforms all across the world.

Let’s get started with the new tier!

View attachment 954275
View attachment 954276
Note: These reforms and the tier are part of the 1.35 free update. It is a shared tier between Monarchies, Republics, Theocracies and Tribal governments.

You might have noticed that none of these reforms give “hard” land military modifiers. The general idea was that the generic military reforms should be somewhat of a utility reform for your army. Depending on the situation you might want to pick a different reform.

The three exceptions to these are the mercenary as well as the naval reforms. The former gives mercenary discipline in order to encourage active usage of mercenary units for combat (this is especially directed at players like me who love to park their merc units on a fort and forget about them until a siege is over) while the latter is more for the role play aspect.

With that being said, Domination itself brings additional reforms for the 5th tier. These reforms, however, are locked behind specific culture groups in order to give variety to the world. Here are are some examples:

View attachment 954277
Note: As usual, neither numbers nor modifiers are final.

Some reforms enable certain mechanics unique to the government reform. For example, completing the mercenary ideas unlocks the following government reform:

View attachment 954280
View attachment 954282
Note: The actual price is 0.1 Years of Income.

Now that we have covered the tier 5 reforms, let us return to Tier 1. While the addition of many additional reforms was highly praised, we still were feeling that a bit more variety is missing. As Domination is already a DLC focusing on a global scope, it was only fitting that we introduce new Tier 1 reforms in order to make regions have something to look forward to with the upcoming update and DLC:


A few other new Tier 1 get unlocked as you play through your campaign and form other countries:


Additionally, Domination will unlock some “over-the-top” government reforms for achieving a difficult-ish feat:


Last but not least, Domination enables two new generic Tier 1 reforms for Monarchies and Republics:


Whenever a new ruler ascends the throne you get the following event pop-up:


You always have the option to choose one from your nobility to become the new ruler. Additionally, if you border a country that is not independent, has the Nobility (or its Indian equivalent) estates, is a monarchy, is not at war with you and is not in a regency then you get the choice to elect one of the said country’s relatives to your new ruler. However, this specific ruler is the only one whose stats you cannot see before.

The event will always pick the most developed country as the origin of this foreign noble. Of course I want to point out that this is subject to changes.

The other reform is one for the Republics:


Unlike other Republics, this reform tries to mix things up by introducing max terms for a ruler to rule.


Of course this stands to the antithesis of the optimal play of Republics where you want to re-elect the same guy over and over again. Because of that, this reform aims for making modifiers which increase the length of terms and more stats for random candidates more attractive by giving new rulers a new lifetime long modifier which makes choosing a new candidate:


There are in total 15 modifiers, 5 for each category (ADM/DIP/MIL). Here is the list of possible modifiers to get from your ruler:

Code:
civic_republicanism_focus_government = {
    reform_progress_growth = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_expansion = {
    core_creation = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_technology = {
    idea_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_stability = {
    stability_cost_modifier = -0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_religion = {
    global_missionary_strength = 0.01
}


civic_republicanism_focus_diplomacy = {
    diplomatic_reputation = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_court = {
    all_estate_influence_modifier = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_trade = {
    trade_efficiency = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_subjects = {
    diplomatic_annexation_cost = -0.05
}
civic_republicanism_focus_development = {
    development_cost = -0.05
}


civic_republicanism_focus_defensive = {
    defensiveness = 0.2
}
civic_republicanism_focus_sieges = {
    siege_ability = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_leaders = {
    leader_land_shock = 1
    leader_naval_shock = 1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_quality = {
    land_morale = 0.1
}
civic_republicanism_focus_naval = {
    naval_morale = 0.1
    global_ship_trade_power = 0.1
}

These were the government reforms, but I am not done yet. Domination also unlocks up to 60 new Estate Privileges, distributed amongst all the estates (Janissaries and Eunuchs not counted in). It would be a bit too much if I go into detail for every privilege, so instead I will showcase a set of privileges which can be expected for the major estates (Clergy, Burghers and Nobles) and then a few highlights for the more niche estates.


Every estate gains one privilege which allows you to develop your provinces without the affected estate to lose crown land. While this seems like a drawback for a few estates, for others like the Nobility which has access to Increased Levies or the Rajputs whose access to their special units is tied to the crown land they have it will be a powerful tool.


Most estates will also gain access to a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the influence said estate has.


Finally, there is a privilege whose modifiers directly scale with the loyalty of your estate. So an estate with 100% Loyalty would give the full modifiers.

Now, you might have noticed that the last privilege has an “Estate Decision” or, synonymously called “Estate Action”. For those who did not play EUIV before 1.30: the estates used to have interactions that you can press in order to get a one-time effect from the estate. Some might even remember the old golden rule of giving the estates 80% influence and then demanding their support every 20 years for 200 Monarch Power.

Well, this has now returned in form of decisions that are unlocked by the estates:


While other interactions have been reworked into an effect that interacts with your estate agendas.


While other interactions have been reworked into an effect which interacts with your estate agendas.


Finally a few estate privileges from the less prevalent estates:


And that’s all for today! Here @Pavía again! We hope you enjoy all this new content we have created for Europa Universalis IV: Domination. But on top of that, next week we will be talking about more new content we have created… In this case, free content! We are adding a fair amount of content to the previous DLCs and the base game as we wanted to give the gameplay even more depth and continue to expand some of the features that are included in them, and also as a reward for the large player base that continues to support Europa Universalis IV after almost 10 years of development. See you next week!

I’m loving this! One question, though. Could we get some elaboration on the “max parliament seats” bonus for Byzantium? Does this patch come with a cap?
 
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Only 5 years for the Franconian mission seems extemely harsh. Given the fact that the player has no way of knowing when the Ansbach inheritance will fire.
 
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Wow, these are massive and super cool changes. What about Germanic specific reforms tho and if you already overhaul the Netherlands, please allow them to form Germany too. The only reason why Dutch split off is because the Lowlands didn't take part in the vowel shift + didn't remain under the Habsburg influence which historically led to High German replacing Low German but in the time period dutch was just another dialect of the low German language continuum.
 
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Any possibility of more monuments to be added to the game?
From the DD:
''Note: An idea I had during development would be to have the ability of closing and opening the canal, either in general or towards foes but alas, it was not meant to be. More on Great Projects at a later DD.''

So yes, it seems like there will be a DD dedicated on monuments in the future.
We already have 2 confirmed new ones:
One in China that spans multiple provinces (Great Canal?)
Something in France (most likely in Avignon)
 
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I think it is very unreasonable that any country can acquire EoC.Not only is it not historical and tempting almost every other country to get EoC and get the core, when I was playing smaller countries in EUR, I always wondered if it would be too easy for me to just go to China and get EoC, which greatly reduced my game experience. Because I lose my motivation to play the game when I have an option to easily get a core of 1100 development. I think the EoC should be limited to.
There was the Dutch East India Companty, the French East India Company, the Portuguese East India Company, the Danish East India Company, the British East India Company, the Swedish East India Company, the Genoese East India Company and even the Austrian East India Company. So it's not really ahistorical, is it?
 
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Yes, I made a quick pass on the AI and taught it how to pick some important privileges.

I know this was a problem due to personnel after LotN, but has any attempt been made to tweak the AI aggression levels? Empires, especially the HRE are still behaving pretty absurdly, and IMO more aggressive than the average player can be expected to perform. As recently as last night I was still experiencing Emperor Austria calling me to wars to fully annex all of Swabia and Bavaria in repeated conquests. Likewise, a France who gets BI will push into the HRE, generate coalitions, ignore them, and still declare wars on the HRE and win.

If it can't be addressed on the whole, can it at least be made so that the HRE does not have the same culture group land desire that normal empires do?
 
After a proper reading, some good changes for Portugal, adding some flavour. Really like the Ottoman Clash buff and the 2 gov reforms. Very flavourful.
The Avis change is excellent, and the historical salt provinces will add to the early economy.
Blue Portugal: chefs kiss*

Now what I would have loved to see:
On Caravels and Galleons, and seeing the VoC ship, I really wished for a Carrack: Heavy with transport and some trade power.
Edit: to add that from a pop culture point of view galleon is heavily associated with Spain, and the Carracks with Portugal.

Some reshuffle of the NI, as It is my opinion that Artillery buff and Fort Defense should come earlier.

An estate privilege for Nobility: Nobility of Service to unlock Aventureiros

Order of Christ order with the Sailor buff.

On a bigger scope, some what if missions tree and a bigger participation on the war of castillian sucession would be great.

But considering Portugal was not in the main focus of this patch they are some pretty good changes.

Many thanks to @Pavía and tinto team for their continued support and response to our feedback. Portugal is surely in a much better place at the moment.
 
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A really awesome dev diary, I'm especially excited for the various new government reforms added with the free update.
However I have a couple of questions: Does the Hermit Kingdom give access to the Examination System reform? It would be a shame to lose access to it imo. It was not specified, but the Ganden Phodrang for Tibet is actually available to Monarchy, Theocracy or both? I think the better option would be the latter, anyway I'm curious with which other reforms I can pair it.

Lastly, a couple of requests: could we please get access to the cossack estate while having the Sich Rada Government Reform? And do you have any plan to ever add a Theocracy equivalent for the Celestial Empire? It would fit nicely with the new government reform for Tibet.
 
Oh, and chiming in to agree with others that for those tier 3 Prussian buttons to be relevant, they need to be vastly stronger. As is, I can’t see myself ever clicking them. Otherwise, the decay of the third level should be lessened, not increased, or I might just skip completing the mission.
 
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Well it's really the issues with how the AI handles the reformation that I'm currently unsatisfied with. Exactly one year (plus a few days) after the first truly random center of reformation appears, two of the following countries (and possibly others, this isn't exhaustive) will immediately flip:

Protestant - Denmark, Sweden, Bohemia, England/Britain, Saxony, Brandenburg
Reformed - Switzerland, Scotland, Three Leagues

It's not an event that causes this, it's not because there's already some of the agitating religion in their country, it's because their AI has been given a preferred religion of Protestant/Reformed. The downsides to this are the Reformation is less dynamic and yet more difficult to crush (not automatically bad, but you'd like a broader range of difficulty for it than always having to snake to Prague and Stockholm), and the fact it's two countries making this decision at exactly the same time make it feel forced and railroaded. And the English decision to flip is especially weird, because half the time they'll flip religion again when Anglican opens up, which means a Center of Reformation for Protestantism is wasted if you're playing that route. The 1.33 approach where Brandenburg would sit with 0% religious unity and refuse to flip wasn't great, but we're too far in the other direction. If there isn't a scripted event for a country to change religion (like Geneva), maybe they should have some diegetic reason to change.
Personally, I prefer it this way. EU4 doesn't have game rules unfortunately or I would say make it a game rule.

The issue is, there really are no dynamic factors modeled currently that would logically influence which countries pick Protestant and which ones stay Catholic. So if you don't do this, it just feels totally random, which I don't think is an improvement. In a perfect world, maybe it would be based on something like "Distance from Rome" or whether or not you have the same primary culture group as the Papal States, so you'd still have it more likely that Spain/Italy would stay Catholic and Northern Europe would become Protestant, but with a bit more randomness than we have now.

Definitely agree that England should wait for Anglicanism and not just go generic Protestant, though.
 
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With a new solution for making sure AI Korea isn’t expanding into Manchuria, will you think about revisiting Korea’s starting development? Their development was lowered in 1.29 to stop them from bullying the Manchus, but in doing so brought Korean development far below what it was in reality. I know development is an abstraction, but considering Hanseong was nearly as big as some of the biggest Chinese cities, I think it at the very least should start with more dev
 
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I love what Tinto has done and I can't wait to get my hands on this expansion (y'all have breathed some serious life into the government reforms and estates), but I feel a bit burned with the Prussia rework. It feels like it gets very few administrative/blob aids in return for a decent nerf to army militarization. The early militarization is a direct downgrade from our current version with regard to the modifiers and the upgraded version appears equivalent in modifiers with the great trade off of that you lose a great deal of monthly militarization. I don't think the movement bonus and AT bonus (which cost said precious militarization) compensates for this (The AT of Prussia is usually near capped at 100 from my experience). I loved the original idea of having to balance your expansion (∝GC) with your army quality (∝Militarization). If it needs a nerf, is there a way to expand upon that? In my understanding of the proposed version, it feels like I'm spending more points for a comparable army at diminished rates from our current version, with expansion elements becoming a more minor consideration in that calculation.
 
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Austria is already the worst major due to garbage scaling and ideas compared to its neighbours. Not reworking its missions or at least ideas while omega boosting france (poland last patch) ottoman , russia etc etc makes it kinda dead (not gonna bother mentionning it for mp and its disastrous state).

I hope 1.36 will be about reworking every idea groups in a fun way that creates more possible builds and not just quality eco(eco will be replaced by infrastructure on 1.35)

Uh, no, that would be Muscovy/Russia, and based on the appropriate DLC that will only get worse with the heavy early game nerfs they are getting making the mid/later game buffs meaningless as the ai will hardly ever access them. Austria is more than strong enough when played as intended (dominate the HRE and form/use the vassal swarm), it isn't supposed to be able to stand toe to toe with the likes of France on its own, that's why they hand it PUs like candy...



We'll, our objective is to try to keep it as balanced as possible. Precisely because of this, we present the new content in the DDs, so we can read community's thoughts about what needs buffs, what nerfs, possible reworks, etc.

And yet you still release clearly unbalanced content despite being alerted to problematic situations. Might I direct your attention to the Jun 19 dev diary and the concerns that were raised in the discussion regarding the poor performance of Muscovy/Russia on display in the included screenshots. Nothing was changed and in the live version now ai Muscovy is literally a joke. Then you outline changes for Russia in a recent dev diary and ignore requests from players for data on ai performance based on the added early game nerfs on top of the already poor performance.

So I'll simply ask again... How is ai Muscovy/Russia performing in testing and if (as I expect) the answer is "terribly" what are you going to do to improve the situation?
 
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