• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 4th of March 2024 - Aztecs, Mayans and Incas

While the European kingdoms are leaving the Medieval period and starting their centralization to the modern states, the New World these soon-to-be colonizers will discover is already home to other empires. The heart of Mexico is settled by the Nahuatl empire of the Aztecs, led by the great Moctezuma I who aims to centralize the Triple Alliance and establish a realm that drives fear to the hearts of its enemies. The Mayans, once controllers of the jungles of Chiapas and Guatemala have retreated to the Yucatan peninsula. Their once great realm is now splintered into a series of city-states, not all too unlike the Italian domains. In the heights of the Andes reigns the many different Inti kingdoms. One of them, Cusco, will be destined to unify the region under the rule of Pachacuti and his descendants, forming the first Incan Empire.

Welcome to our newest Development Diary for the upcoming DLC. Today, we will take a look at the content for Central and South America - namely the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Incas. As always, all values you see here are NOT final. So without further ado, let us get started.

First, we shall take a look at Mexico and a few setup changes there:
image_1.png

The Mexico Trade Node has received some additional Centers of Trade, as well as a new province modifier added to a few selected provinces that represent the mining of obsidian. This is, however, only limited to those of the Mesoamerican technology group:
image_2.png

Next are some changes to the country of the Aztecs. They now start with the Empire rank instead of the Kingdom rank and their starting ruler, Moctezuma I, also starts with the guaranteed “Legendary Conqueror” personality trait.
image_3.png

However, the Aztecs were never as centralized as EU4 can realistically depict it. Historically, they were more an alliance of the city-states instead, though Moctezuma I was on his way to centralize the state. As such, the Aztecs also start with a new privilege:
image_4.png

Now let us take a closer look at the mission tree:
image_5.png

Note: Mission icons are still placeholders and will be of course replaced with the proper images for the release.

The mission tree is separated into 3 big chunks. The first block at the very top is about dominating the Mexican region, and as such is the main bulk of your New World conquest. The biggest highlight of this part is the opportunity to buff your Moctezuma progressively more as you continue through your missions.
image_6.png

Note: We might add a Monarch Lifespan modifier to these rewards so your Moctezuma can enjoy his newfound powers for a little bit longer. We also might consider changing his starting situation as a general into an event to further increase his survivability.

The second subtree is all about your government and, of course, your blood tribute to the gods. Some highlights from this part are the following:
image_7.png

Now a few of you might have noticed that certain keywords such as “Blood” and “Mesoamerican Tributaries” have been mentioned. These are part of the new government mechanics the Aztecs will now start with:
image_8.png

image_9.png

image_10.png

image_11.png

Note: The art is still work in progress.

The “Demand Sacrifices” peace option always requires a 50% War Score and grants 10 Blood.
image_12.png

Next are the Mesoamerican Tributaries which is a new subject type available to all Mayan and Nahuatl countries. You establish them with a new peace treaty:
image_13.png

image_14.png

They act just like normal tributaries, though you can sacrifice their ruler and you can annex them. On that note, all of your conquest missions in Mesoamerica can be completed via these tributaries or vassals.

Last but not least, the final subtree is all about the economic and military affairs of the Aztecs. I should also probably mention here that there are no Jaguar special units and a tease for them was not intentional whatsoever. With that being said, here are some highlights of these missions:

image_15.png

Note: these missions are more long-term based as you will require some higher advanced technologies to complete them. Also, the Telpochcalli Academy will probably have its Possible Number of Buildings penalty replaced.

Before we move on to the next country, one quick note for all the non-Aztec Nahuatl countries: as there was time for only the Aztec mission tree itself, every Nahuatl country gets a decision to adopt the Aztec mission tree if they conquer the Aztecs and own the Mexico provinces themselves.
image_16.png

Moving on to the Mayans, every Mayan country gets a small mission tree at the start which helps you out for the formation of the Mayan Confederation:
image_17.png

Note: With “Venus” we mean the planet Venus. That was localized before finding the name “Chac Ek” or “Noh Ek” to use instead. Will be fixed before release.

Highlights of these missions are the “The Sign of Venus”, “Campaigning Season” and “Reforming our Society” which have evolving rewards. Every time you unlock a Religious Reform, these three missions get reset (in other words “un-completed”) which allows you to complete them again. Their evolving modifier gets upgraded whenever you complete the missions again.

Another change to the Maya formable is that you now need only 2 Mayan Religious Reforms instead of the full 5. However, forming the Mayas will still be rather painful as whenever you enact a new Religious Reform you get a 5 year penalty to your Manpower Recovery Speed (-10%) and your Harsh Treatment Cost (+100%) which also disables the ability to Increase Autonomy and manually decrease War Exhaustion. You also gain +3 War Exhaustion whenever you undergo a reform.

Once you form the Maya you get the following mission tree:
image_18.png

Note: we are aware of the mission title leaving the GUI here. Will be fixed before the release.

Similar to the Aztec mission tree, the Maya one is about unifying Mesoamerica under your banner, as well as focusing on the economic improvements of your empire.

I will focus now on mentioning some highlights of the mission tree which are the following missions:
image_19.png

image_19_5.png

image_20.png

With that, we finish the Mayans and will now take a closer look at the Incas. The first thing that needs to be mentioned is that the map of the Andes does NOT get any additional provinces or tags. This also means that there are no new wastelands too. There are, however, some small setup changes. Similar to the Aztecs, Pachacuti starts with the “Legendary Conqueror” personality trait but has been reduced to a 4/3/5 (down from 5/4/6). The missions Cusco has received are similarly structured to the ones of the Aztecs as they buff your starting ruler:
image_21.png

Some early highlights in the mission tree are the following:
image_22.png

The decision to colonize the provinces requires you to defeat the local tribes and have 50 Ducats ready. Using the decision will then start a Frontier Colony in said province, and this decision can go far along the Andes as you can see in the following screenshot:
image_23.png

Note: All the green-striped provinces are ones you can colonize via the decision.

Additionally, you also have access to the following estate privilege:
image_24.png

Once you form Inca you gain the following mission tree as a whole:
image_25.png

While you have the original Cusco missions about the conquest, you also get four additional, smaller subtrees that have their own focus.

The first small subtree is about the Mitma - a policy of forced resettlement of the border provinces. The highlight here is the following reward:
image_26.png

Another subtree is about the religious nature of the Inca, highlighted by the following reward:
image_27.png

image_28.png

image_29.png

You might now notice that “Regenesis of History” mentions “Mummified Rulers”. As you can see, the Incan religion has an interesting and unique quirk which is the fact that your dead ruler is de jure still alive. They get mummified and continue to participate in all of your governmental activities. To represent this in EU4 you will now always trigger the following event upon your ruler’s demise:
image_30.png

The third subtree is about gold, idols, and economy represented by the following mission rewards:
image_31.png

Finally, the last subtree focuses on developing your lands and your military, giving you the following rewards:
image_32.png

And with that, we conclude the Incan missions. However, we are not entirely done as all the aforementioned countries get one mission subtree which is all about the so-called Sunset Invasion:
image_33.png

These missions are always at the very bottom and follow one major theme which is the invasion of Europe and Asia by the American powers - both main culprits of colonizing the new world in many EU4 campaigns.

I won’t go too much into detail with those missions as they are mostly focused on large conquest campaigns. However, some rewards are worth mentioning:
image_34.png

Last but not least, Fatherlorris' comic:
DD Americas.png

That was it for this week. Thank you all for reading today’s Development Diary! My colleague @Big Boss will continue next week with a DD on the Netherlands, Venice, and Italy.
 
  • 68Like
  • 29
  • 28Love
  • 9
  • 1Haha
  • 1
Reactions:
Oh can we PLEASE make more building slots? I play tall countries, and coastal provinces have more buildings to build but less building slots if they have Center of Trade, which takes 2 building slots. It would be nice if we could fix this so coastal provinces with Center of Trade could have 9 slots for building(or we could add more building slots)
 
  • 15
  • 3Like
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
I like it but this feels rushed, the fact that important tags of the time like the Tarascan Empire arent even getting missions is kinda worrying.
I would especially would've liked to see some variety in South America as the continent can feel very sparse compared to any other region, that we dont even have something like a Muisca or a Mapuche tree feels like a shame.
 
  • 9
  • 5Like
Reactions:
It's funny to see how the player base has evolved. At the time of Cradle of Civilization with DDRJake in command, he was hardly attacked and called mister "tri-button" because players were tired to see that the additions to the game were easy ones without any strategic depth and trade-off and were only three buttons in the gov tab with only bonuses.
Some years latter, Tinto has added far more tri-button than Jake could have imagined but everybody's happy...
 
  • 3
  • 2Haha
  • 1Like
Reactions:
It's funny to see how the player base has evolved. At the time of Cradle of Civilization with DDRJake in command, he was hardly attacked and called mister "tri-button" because players were tired to see that the additions to the game were easy ones without any strategic depth and trade-off and were only three buttons in the gov tab with only bonuses.
Some years latter, Tinto has added far more tri-button than Jake could have imagined but everybody's happy...
And at least Cradle of Civilization came with new flavor for the whole region, updated map, new tags, new religious mechanics, trade policies, army professionalism and drilling, etc.

These latest DLCs have been extremely underwhelming for me, yet people are calling them the best DLCs ever for some reason. DLCs used to add new mechanics and an updated map to keep the gameplay fresh and engaging. Even though Leviathan's launch was a disaster, at least they were trying to do something...

Since then, I feel like they've given up and just add some new events and mission trees and call it a day. That's fine of course, I can just choose not to buy them, but I can't help but miss the old days.
 
  • 8
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I don't like these changes.

The New World has very structural problems: interesting early mechanics but same-y late game, very at the mercy of the mercy of the AI for institutions and attacks (or not getting attacked), colonization speed, very few countries that are actually interesting to play,...

These only enforced that. We got more mainly early mechanics, I didn't see anything that truly fixed the issue of being at mercy of the AI, nothing about colonization speed and the last point I mentioned got much worse: only the few interesting countries got a little more interesting and if you do want to play as a different country, you are strongly encouraged to morph your country into one of the interesting countries by taking over the missions...

There's also the problem this is starting to seem like a paid mod because nothing structural is being done. This is mostly the content a fancy mission mod would do.

I'll give an example of a structural change I expected to see: a more engaging "Arrival of the Europeans". An event, the negative triggered modifier and a few AI which might threaten you in the long run feels a bit bleak compared to the how eu4 now generally handles stuff. Doing something interesting here would've affected all New World countries (unlike only 3) and maybe even the Europeans too. It would've also given something extra to do after the initial reform religion period of the game.
 
  • 9
  • 1Like
Reactions:
You've barely mentioned religion so I'm guessing their religions stay as is. Two questions:
1) Have you done away with the legacy "primitive" spaghetti code that exists for reforming/westernising but prevents reformed Americans from turning their vassals into marches because "primitive nations cannot make marches"?
2) Have you ensured that any references to reform progress in Incan missions are for Inti reform and not government reform, or just tweaked them so that the government reform progress is actually useful pre-reforming now?
 
  • 5
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
I hope they remove all tribal states from Australia and Oceania.
The further and further we move away from Leviathan, the worse and worse that DLC and patch begin to look. In retrospect, Leviathan has to be the worst DLC for EU4 because the poor decision to to update Australia and Oceania. Mind you, I think it was nice to give those areas flavor, but more flavor than the Aztecs and Inca? Seems like a terrible decision with heavily misplaced priorities.
 
  • 8
Reactions:
Why though? How is it any different from any other part of the world that the Europeans subjugated and converted? Let the Indigenous Americans be Indigenous Americans with their religion and culture.
Setting aside that this would just be giving them an option…

It is nothing more than a weird meme to keep human sacrifice going. The people being sacrificed tend to not like it, and when they have the opportunity to do something about it, they do. All it took in the Old World was the mastery of ironworking. Here, firearms would do just as well. As would those pale skinned foreigners that are happy to ally with you to help you overthrow the group sacrificing people.
 
  • 2
Reactions:
Since then, I feel like they've given up and just add some new events and mission trees and call it a day.
Ah yes, except for new subject types, government reforms, estates and estate privileges, adding several new idea groups, huge game rebalances (including starting setup - remember how everyone thought Byz was doomed even for players with their setup change) and more genuine flavour to basically all the countries that they have taken a look at. Those apparently don't count. You may not necessarily agree that those changes have an impact, but they are also genuine changes that, depending on the situation, can have an impact on your game.

I mean, it's not like I also don't want more provinces, more religions and more mechanics. But EU4 is also a really bloated and old game already running on a much earlier version of Clausewitz engine. At least personally, if - IF - it means Tinto was being trained through EU4 by expanding on already existing mechanics and expanding them instead of bloating the game more to become better at developing what Europa Universalis is meant to be, I consider it a *potentially* worthwhile trade-off if EU5 ends up being a genuinely good game at release. Obviously, who knows at this point, but some perspective is also in order.

And also, they haven't shown the entirety of the content for these nations, just teasers essentially. We shall see how much - or how little - actual content there is once we actually get our hands on it.
 
  • 2
  • 1Like
Reactions:
are you guys still selling community mods as dlc ? because mechanics are seems so similar im not even sure if you are directly copying the mechanics and ideas from free mods ?
 
  • 4Haha
Reactions:
No Andes wastelands? I'm extremely disappointed. You guys should have thought twice before adding all those useless new provinces in Australia.
I remember back when the Australia DD came out, the dev noted that it started as a personal side project that was conveniently expanded because they already had a focus on SEA, so it made "sense" to also touch up Australia and New Zealand because they were in the "area".
 
I remember back when the Australia DD came out, the dev noted that it started as a personal side project that was conveniently expanded because they already had a focus on SEA, so it made "sense" to also touch up Australia and New Zealand because they were in the "area".
Yes, unlike in Golden Century when it made no sense to update South America despite the overwhelming presence of the targeted focus countries of the update for basically the entirety of the game's timeframe, I guess.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions:
Yes, unlike in Golden Century when it made no sense to update South America despite the overwhelming presence of the targeted focus countries of the update for basically the entirety of the game's timeframe, I guess.
Precisely. Golden Century would have made the best sense for the entirety of Latin America (Mexico, Mesoamerica, and South America) to get a map face lift.
 
  • 3
Reactions:
Note: We might add a Monarch Lifespan modifier to these rewards so your Moctezuma can enjoy his newfound powers for a little bit longer. We also might consider changing his starting situation as a general into an event to further increase his survivability.
Yes do that please.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Great work, but i have some doubts:
-No tier 4 governement reform for nahuatl, maya and inca religions?
-The text talks about 4 gods, but only 3 and their bonuses are depicted there is a 4th? Huitzilopochtli i guess
-Mesoamerican tributaries count as vassals towards the religion reform mechanic of the nahuatl?
 
  • 1
Reactions:
Wow, I'm very excited to do some new world playthroughs with these new features!

Is there any chance we'll get to see Lake Texcoco added to the map? I'm always a little disappointed playing Aztecs, that I don't get to see the lake.
 
  • 1Like
  • 1
Reactions: