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Introduction
After the launch of The New World mod and given the excellent experience that we had working together to fulfill the same objective, we decided to look at the game as a whole system, changing it in all its diverse aspects to cover our complete view of the game.
As befits the History of the time, there are no total wars in the game. This was enfasized in Magna Mundi. In fact, we simulate better the balance of power between the various nations by making each other more sensible to judge any powermongering between them. The badboy is now half of what was before. This has a significant impact in all the game dynamics. Countries must be much more careful about when, what and who they conquer. The diplomatic rating of a leader has now double the importance as before because we kept its bonus to the badboy threshold the same. We give now feedback through events when a country starts acting agressively to the foreign community. The events are scaled and provide the player with a good measure to evaluate their current stance. We also introduced some events that give the player the oportunity to end a badboy war by giving him serious penalties for a significant amount of time (the higher the badboy value, the stiffer the penalties).
It is also important to consider that a continuous aggressive behaviour gives more penalties right now, mainly due to the fact that the revolt risk is now an important issue to be considered. Going into negative stability is bad news, possibly making any province in the country subject to some revolt risk. Pursuing a strategy of permanent negative stability will likely end up in disaster, especially if your nation has several cultures or religions. Tolerance, while still being central to any countries’ overarching strategy, is a bit weaker on its effects. Finally, culture differences provide a wider rift than before, turning the management of a peaceful, tolerant, multicultural and multireligious empire into some sort of a challenge by itself.
With the significant increase in time to claim a core and the impossibility of losing one except through events, we aimed at making the game, and consequently the AI, to be a little bit more slow paced and careful on its decisions and results. This was also our objective when we introduced provincial modifiers that, from the start, gives each province an increase in the fortress level. Some provinces also got a hands down increase in the fortress level – after all, not every fortress was built equal!
In the original game, cavalry may not have been good for sieging the above mentioned fortresses, but they certainly rule the battlefield in a way that any informed player will only field them when facing a battle. Not anymore. First, we introduced the concept of a army specialization system to encourage different recruitment styles for nations. The system assigns a starting specialization. A reform event is possible to change specialization later in the game.
Then we included a cavalry pay system. Basically, the higher the proportion of cavalry in the army, the more it will cost the country to maintain and recruit it. We assure you, no more blonde mongols in full plate on the German green pastures!
On the colonization front, we kept the changes done before for the New World Mod… with a not so small diference. Now, the QftNW idea can only be given through event up to 1650. And it will be given for a very short amount of time, the time for the player to recruit an explorer/conquistador team (it depends on how much he wants to invest). Then, it will be taken away again – while the players keeps the team they have recruited, of course. Besides this random way of having explorers/ conquistadors (only available for some nations and the player), all the exploration will be done through events, like the Early Portuguese Discoveries or the Columbus Event Chain illustrates.
Talking about Quest for the New World, let us tell you the National Ideas got totally overhauled. Our objective was to implement some sort of specialization in the mechanics of this game aspect as well as making it harder for the player to decide upon which idea to choose next. We are proud to say no idea seems useless right now. Every one of them can suit a particular play style, a particular strategy or a particular country.
We are both ignorant about the far Orient. However unpalatable for our ego, that is a fact. Enter Sakura, his knowledge and his ability to spice up Japan. We think it is very important the game feels “live” from the point of any major country, and certainly Japan was a major power on its own right five hundred years ago. We are very happy the far east History is now taking shape through the work of Sakura, as well as Duke of Earl, who is taking care of China.
In Europe’s original game however, we saw again and again that the Holy Roman Empire was in fact the Empire of the three lies. He was neither “Holy”, as he kepts warrying from the inside, nor “Roman”, because it was more germanic in nature, nor even an “Empire”, because more often than not, it would end up as a property of a single country, a huge blob to mar the map, right in the middle of europe. Daboese come to the fray and produced a first class set of events that work to keep a good behaviour between HRE member states… at least most of the time, which is desirable. This, together with our subtler changes to some random events works wonders in keeping the Empire together and diverse.
While talking informally, we both discovered we had a knack for playing The Knights. In fact, we had both secret plans to deal with them. When I heard SharpAlignment talk about a tongue system, I looked at mine own tongue and aknowledging my ignorance, I understood my best option was to turn tail and run. It was a wise decision. The Knights have now a dedicated chain of events that makes them very interesting to play, while being great, great fun.
As included before, Central America is properly covered by event chains to give it flavour. The Aztecs in particular, got a nice event chain depicting The Flower Wars that ends up to give them an edge versus other Central American nations.
To conclude the Portuguese event chain for the first 50 years of the game we implemented “The Lesser of two Evils” event chain that tells the story - that happens to be History – of Portuguese tumultuous internal situation between 1475 and 1485. For gameplay reasons the timespan of the events was increased somewhat.
Our idea for this first release was to define the gameplay base upon which the event chains for each nation will be implemented. We are very pleased with the testing so far, as it proves the game engine can be tammed to be more challenging and realistic in the way it aproaches the abstractions of the strategic environment of five hundred years ago. The game style is now more mature and deep. We are also very pleased to see the AI choosing sensible strategies based on our defined variables, something rarely seen in games. Credit goes to Paradox, of course.
Finaly, possibly what pleases us most are the people who offered their work for inclusion in our mod. Certainly this shows a way of a quicker implementation of event chains at least for the major countries. We hope like minded individuals add to the general effort of creating a game that feels different, plays different but makes justice to the Europa Universalis brand.
Europa Universalis III: Magna Mundi
I was wishing you luck in achieving your goals for the mod, not in beating the "competition." 
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