Featured content

BjornB · Mar 1, 2016

New Europa Universalis IV Expansion Pulls Into Port Master the Sea in Mare Nostrum[/I]

The grandest of grand strategy games will soon get even larger with Mare Nostrum, a new expansion for Europa Universalis IV. Ever since its 2013 release, Paradox Development Studio has labored to fill in the romantic and turbulent history of the early modern world. Now, with Mare Nostrum, we turn our eyes to the seas.

Among the many changes coming in Mare Nostrum is the idea of "sailors". Similar to the manpower statistic you are already familiar with, sailors will be required if you want to build or repair your ships. Your navy can also be sent out on missions with instructions on when to return home, reducing your need to babysit your fleets that are far from home.

Darkrenown · Mar 1, 2016

Hello all! I promise I will go back to writing more interesting Dev Diaries soon, but there is not much to talk about this week. Currently we are gathering feedback from the 2.5.2 beta (go try it if you haven't yet!) and working to fix some outstanding issues before finalizing the patch.

Other than that, I can reveal we have started planning a new DLC, so you can expect to start hearing details about that in the coming weeks. That's really all I can say at the moment!

Alexivan · Feb 29, 2016

Good news everyone!

Today’s Dev Diary will be about Multiplayer and what makes it so great in Stellaris.

Let's start with the basics. Players are able to host games with 32 player designed empires and optionally, several extra randomized AI empires. If you have a new person who would like to join an ongoing campaign they can hotjoin into an already existing empire. This also allows the players to leave or take a break from the ongoing multiplayer campaign and leave their empire in the capable hands of the AI. The host may also choose to host a multiplayer game from a save game allowing players to play grand campaigns lasting several weeks.

podcat · Feb 26, 2016

Welcome to a new development diary. This time *takes a sip of earl grey* we are going to look at United Kingdom. They start as the leader of the allies (who at this point is basically the commonwealth) and what really sets them apart is their sprawling colonial empire and the Royal Navy - the strongest fleet in the world at this time at 35 capital ships and around 200 smaller vessels.

Johan · Feb 25, 2016

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. Today we’ll talk about features that will be part of the next patch, and will enhance the historical feeling of the game.

The first of these major paradigm shifting concepts is what we refer to as States and Territories. A large part of the game has been related to what you can do with a province depending on if it is overseas or not. With the overseas concept, there have been very many limitations that have reduced immersion.

What we have now, is that every region you own and control is represented as a Territory. Provinces in a Territory, unless the Territory is upgraded to a State, is considered overseas for almost all previous rules when it comes to things like coring, autonomy, trade companies etc. So why would you not just make everything into a state then you ask?

BjornB · Feb 24, 2016

News Bulletin - January 13th 1943.
Following the capitulation of the Soviet Union, and the divide of their territories between the victorious Axis powers; US forces managed to force Japan to a surrender most of it's territory. Now, the former Soviet Union is split in half with Gemans controlling the Western parts, the US in the east and a pocket of Japanese resistance in between.
With dominion over the seas secured, the Allied armies are ready to strike in any location along the German controlled European coast, and the Allies have landed a small British invasion force consisting of 9 divisions in southern Sicily under the leadership of General Henry Wilson. Italian forces are doing their best to fight them off in the mountainous eastern regions of the island. Meanwhile; Greece, backed by a few Chinese divisions, are holding off the Axis while British and American troops are fighting for supremacy in Turkey.

Darkrenown · Feb 23, 2016

Hello all! I'm afraid I don't have much to talk about today as we're still working on the 2.5.2 patch I mentioned last week. We were hoping to have it out by now, but ran into some unexpected issues. However, on the plus side as soon as we have things working as we want, we'll be releasing it as a public beta for everyone to try out.

However, here are the current patchnotes to keep you interested:

Code:

Major:
- Reworked Coalitions into Defensive Pacts:
    - Renamed Infamy to Threat, and Coalition to Defensive Pact
    - Defensive Pacts are entirely Defensive and will never launch Offensive wars against the target
    - Coalition/Defensive Pact Mapmode now only shows the Defensive Pacts against selected Realms
    - Split up defensive pacts based on religious groups
    - Threat level controls the size of realms which are allowed to join defensive pacts to protect themselves from a threat
    - Threat level controls how far away realms can be in order to join in defensive pacts
    - AI Realms with equal or greater troop strength than a target will never join Defensive Pacts against them
    - Your own religious group have a lower defensive pact distance
    - As a Realm's threat increases, the different Defensive Pacts will be willing to work together to contain them.
    - Updated Threat alert tooltip with detailed information
    - Maximum Threat from a single source capped at 100%
    - Maximum threat from a province capped at 15%
    - Minimum threat from a province set to 2%
    - Minimum monthly threat decay set to 0.21%
    - Maximum monthly threat decay set to 0.4%
    - Claims for yourself now only gives 85% threat.
    - Claims for someone else now only gives 50% threat.
    - Dejure claim for yourself now only gives 50% threat.
    - Dejure claim for someone else now only gives 30% threat.
    - Liberate nomad duchy generates only 75% of threat
- Battle and Retreat changes:
    - Made battles give 25% more warscore, to get battle warscore closer to what it was before the casualty reduction
    - Won battle vs hosts give twice the warscore
    - Shattered retreat no longer count distance through sea or wasteland
    - Added attrition during shattered retreat
    - Shattered armies ignore leader attrition reduction
    - Shattered retreat now considers province size (through movement cost) when computing distance to target
    - Looters who shatter won't be able to loot that province's owner for a while anymore
    - Looters will shatter to their boats if they can
    - Total Warscore from battles capped at 75% for attacker
    - Shattered retreat favors slightly coastal provinces adjacent to boats you can embark in
- Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors
- Fixed game over caused by daughters running away and becoming mercenaries
- Added events for skilled educators to influence children during adolescence
- Added a button for playing the next song
- Added a setting for ignoring context sensitive music (ie regardless of culture and if being in war or not).
- Added additional favor events
- Added Groom an Heir ambition
- Fixed instant OOS between different platforms
- AI no longer transforms matrilineal betrothal into regular marriages (and vice versa)
- No longer possible to break betrothal set up as from a favor
- Added new law, Council Authority
- Added character modifier Rejecting Seduction Attempts
- Characters with Rejecting Seduction Attempts can not be targeted by the seduce decision
- Added options to seduction targets to ask seducers to go away


Minor:
- Fixed issue with Blot event making the host a lover instead of the intended target
- Faction for Elective Succession has been tweaked to appear less frequently
- Council allows their liege to hand out demesne if vastly above demesne limit
- Fixed issue where duplicate laws were set when granting titles
- Ask Liege for Title now only grants counties
- Added favor effect to counter offer event asking broke liege to sell land
- Brilliant Strategist will now also apply one random leadership trait
- Added assert details for undeclared opinion modifiers
- It is no longer possible to ask liege for land if they have a regent
- AI children will more often gain childhood traits
- Made tooltip to show options leading to childhood traits
- Added new traits Brawny and Frail, which are similar to Strong and Weak but non-congenital.
- Added the traits Shrewd and Dull, which are similar to Quick and Slow but non-congenital.
- Added scripted triggers which check for related traits, e.g. is_strong_trigger checks for either strong or robust. Others are: is_dumb_trigger, is_weak_trigger, and is_smart_trigger
- Various events and decisions etc which checked for strong/weak/quick/slow etc now also check for brawny/frail/shrewd/dull
- Added text for the outliner when new conclave alerts are disabled
- Events adding Strong or Weak now add Brawny or Frail
- Most events adding Slow or Imbecile now add Dull instead, exception is when upgrading to slow from imbecile
- Events giving Quick or Genius now add Shrewd (except Devil spawn). It is possible to stack Shrewd with quick/genius
- Event 64080 shall no longer cause men to impregnate themselves
- Viceroys can no longer switch primary titles
- Close relatives can now form alliances
- Vassals in hiding are no longer upset about not being on the council
- Added confirm pop-up when clicking on Abandon Game in MP
- Fixed a problem where the wrong council vote result was received for Declare War Interaction
- Top bar buttons and their corresponding shortcuts are now disabled if you are in observer mode
- No longer able to CTA character into wars with a religious head that is different from their religion
- Allies attached to a retreating army can no longer be engaged
- AI no longer declare war on player during Learning Scenario
- People with NAPs with their liege will no longer join Factions against their liege
- People who have a NAP with their liege will leave factions against their liege if they're in one (e.g. they got the NAP after joining the faction)
- Fixed revolters against a viceroy becoming independent on that viceroy's death
- Fixed characters not becoming vassals of people who usurp their main title if they had a liege before hand
- Divorces and event-based marriage breaking now remove non aggression pacts
- Councilors who get replaced correctly get the fired from council opinions
- Fixed Councilors for Major Revolt leaders not being sent home when the revolt ends and they are no longer a vassal of said leader
- Inherited opinions against a Liege's successor are now more comprehensive in what they include
- If you manage to seduce your spouse it will no longer be considered a scandalous act of incest (unless you are married under by certain religious ceremonies) because you are related (being spouses to each other), even if you are keeping it in the family.
- The ai will no longer install vassals of vassals as anti-popes that are automatically invalidated due to not being their direct vassals.
- Added some fixes to mercenary events.
- Increased the negative opinion for powerful vassals not being part of the council.
- Fixed some issues in succession law triggers when you're part of a Duke or Count tier independent realm.
- Added a number of new insults and compliments to the dynamic insult/compliment system for traits.
- Added special childish insults/compliments to many traits. Younger children will now use these instead of the adult ones.
- Committing suicide now gives you a strong negative general opinion modifier.
- Mercenary bands you own can be renamed using the customization dlc
- The realm view interface updates automatically when a title is being renamed
- Imbecile characters use childish insults
- Changed the name of "Context sound" setting to "Dynamic ambient sounds"
- Realm peace properly blocked when council is discontent
- AI with high vassal opinions are more prone to go against the will of the council
- AI with low rationality (insanity) are more prone to go against the will of the council
- AI will go against the council if it wants to declare war, but the council says no to every war
- Added Peter Skager to the credits
- Added Timor Khanagov to the credits
- AI will no longer spam the player with request council support requests
- DLC and mod tab texts aligned in launcher
- Fixed rare crash in papal election
- Updated councillor spend liege favor to change law tooltip
- Council discontent tooltips are now more clear regarding laws and councillors joining factions
- Fixed bug where females no longer got +0.5 health from birth
- Next song buttons shows current song in tooltip
- Primogeniture and ultimogeniture no longer blocked if the character stands to inherit titles that could potentially make the inheritance illegal (will block if those titles are actually inherited instead)
- Holy orders will join defensive pacts in the same manner as religious heads
- AI more accepting to council support if risking imprisonment
- Non dynastic or close kin children in your court get auto assigned educations at age 15
- Only independent characters can be part of defensive pacts
- Powerful vassal trigger added
- Powerful vassals are decided by realm size using age as tiebreaker
- Change mercenary composition adds newlines in tooltips
- Script: replaced "SIEGE_DAMAGE" define with "ATTACKER_SIEGE_DAMAGE" and "DEFENDER_SIEGE_DAMAGE"
- Defenders take 25% more morale damage during sieges
- Buy favor can no longer be used on children
- Buy favor can no longer be used on imprisoned, in hiding or incapable characters
- Minimum buy favor cost is based on tier of target, characters closely related to higher tier characters count as the higher tier
- Start faction tooltip updated to show the need for council voting on war declaration
- Change_mercenary_composition shows correct amount of troops in tooltip
- Members of your court may no longer fire your chaplain via the ZE.5030 event
- Pagan and Nomad subjugation now give their opinion bonus again

Modding:
- Added infamy trigger to test if a character have threat higher than asked for value.
- Added change_infamy effect to add or remove threat from a character.
- Added infamy_modifier to casus belli which will be multiplied with the resulting infamy from a war.
- Can now script a revoke trigger for minor titles
- Added a define if faction membership is blocked by having a non-aggression pact with your liege: NON_AGGRESSION_PACT_BLOCKS_FACTIONS.

BjornB · Feb 22, 2016

View attachment 160152

Participating:
Johan Andersson, Björn Blomberg,Troy Goodfellow, Jakob Munthe, Dan Lind

When?
19:00CET

Will update with the URL when we go live!

Doomdark · Feb 22, 2016

Greetings fellow gamers!

The topic for today is “Alliances and Federations”. Now, we have modelled alliances quite differently in most of our games. In Crusader Kings II, for example, alliances are bilateral, and allies are (since the last patch) automatically dragged into wars with no option of opting out and breaking the alliance. In Europa Universalis IV, alliances are also bilateral, but you can decline a “Call to Arms” at the cost of Prestige. In Stellaris, alliances are multilateral (they can have any number of members, not just two), and are thus more like NATO and less like the complex web of mutual agreements that existed at the outbreak of the Great War. This means that members of an alliance need a greater say in matters that concern the entire alliance, notable declarations of war (and some things are simply not allowed if you are an alliance member, such as guarantees of independence.)

If I am a member of an alliance in Stellaris and I want to declare a war, all the other members of the alliance need to approve. This ties back to what I talked about in the dev diary two weeks ago; if the goals I declare with the war are only beneficial to myself, my allies are of course less likely to approve. Therefore, I will likely have to dicker with the war goals in order to satisfy all of my allies (depending on their opinions and strategic concerns, naturally.) Of course, members can always just leave an alliance (while at peace) if it won’t permit them to achieve their goals.

View attachment 160100

If an alliance works well, however, the members can instead choose to deepen their cooperation and form a Federation. There are pros and cons to this choice. Alliances can be paralyzed by vetoes from the member states, but a Federation is governed by a single President who has the power to act with impunity. On the other hand, the presidency rotates between the member states, so for long periods members will have little control over their foreign policy. Federation members also share victory, which might be a problem for certain types of players…

Another interesting feature of Federations is that they have a special joint space navy in addition to the forces of the separate member empires. The Federation president gets to design these ship templates using all the best technologies of all the member empires. The president also gets to control these fleets, of course. As a rule of thumb, several fairly equally matched empires might want to form a Federation, especially in the face of aggressive, significantly larger neighbors, but it might not be the best idea for empires who are dominant in their own right. Of course, there is also an element of role-playing to the choice…

View attachment 160101

That’s all for now. Next week’s topic is Multiplayer!

podcat · Feb 19, 2016

Time for another friday diary! Today I'll be talking about one of the biggest changes in Hearts of Iron IV compared to the previous titles: Battle Plans.

Design Goals
When I started looking at what direction to take HOI4 for unit control and provinces I first looked at HOI2 and HOI3 to see what worked well and what didn't.

HOI2
+ Fewer provinces making full manual control always possible
- Few provinces leads to a lot less cool encirclements and removes a lot of interesting tactical gameplay

HOI3
+ Lots of provinces allowing encirclements and interesting gameplay
+ HOI3 had a purely cosmetic battle plan drawing system, and still people used it - because drawing plans feels natural in a strategic wargame like this and it feels right to see and makes showing things to others in say AARs easier.
- Lots of provinces means manual control everywhere can be overwhelming, difficult to manage in multiplayer and annoying in areas where you "don't care so much".
- You could hand over control to HQ units run by AI for you and give them objectives. The problem was that effectively you had very little control, and features that play themselves are generally not a good idea. Giving up control also isn't something most players like to do.

Johan · Feb 18, 2016

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for EU4. This time we take a look at Africa, and the changes there. This one of those times when pictures are worth more than 1000 words.

First of all, we have added the entirety of the Kongo region, reaching up to the Great Lakes area. Not just home to the countries of Kongo, Loango and Ndongo, this area now have multiple nations, and could be the basis of a powerful empire.

While we have added over 20 new nations to Central Africa, we have also added new idea groups and unique ideas for these mighty states, including the Great Lakes ideas for our states near the Lake Victoria. These Central Africans also have their own unique technology group, with technology costing 65% more than Westerners.

North we find the Great Lakes Area, with lots of minor nations, some that still exist today, after a brief period of colonialism.

BjornB · Feb 17, 2016

View attachment 159133

May 1942 - The flames of Soviet resistance flicker to an ember as the German invasion pushes beyond the Ural mountains and into Central Asia. Fighting continues in the south of Sweden and scattered pockets along the east coast, as brave soldiers continue to defy the invincible German war machine.
Greece is desperately trying to hold out against the Axis onslaught while the Germans, expecting an Allied invasion attempt, have been hard at work securing the Atlantic and Baltic coastline.
Africa is more or less in Allied hands, and British armies are slowly advancing in the Middle-East. The terrain is tough and supply problems continue to dog the forces of the united nations
Japan's home islands are lost to a lightening US invasion, the government moved to the Asian mainland were they continue their fight against the Chinese while scavenging what they can from the wreckage of Soviet Union. It looks like the war in the east will end soon allowing the Germans to direct it's attention to the Allies, and those lush lands across the sea...

TUNE IN TO - http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive @14:30CET

Darkrenown · Feb 16, 2016

Hello all, welcome to another CK2 DD. First up, please note that I am NOT Doomdark, people confuse us sometimes. With that key point covered, let’s move onto the meat of this diary: The upcoming 2.5.2 patch! We have made several changes to some key areas that we’ve gotten a lot of feedback on recently, the most important of which is of course Seduction!

Characters who have someone trying to seduce them now have the option to let the seducer know they are not interested (based on things like their traits and their opinion of their spouse) which will block all further seduction attempts for some time, both by the original seducer and anyone else.

We have also acted decisively on the issue of Infamy and Coalitions. Sparing no effort, we have renamed these features to Threat and Defensive Pacts, which we feel should resolve all known problems with them.

Oh ok, that isn’t all we did. Coalitions received such an extensive rework that we felt a new name was required. Perhaps the most important change is that Defensive Pacts are now separated by religious groups, so for example if the Byzantines act in a Threatening fashion they might a face a Christian Pact in Europe and a Muslim Pact in the Middle East, and at first the two Pacts won’t care if one attacks the other and only defend members of their own Pact. At higher levels of Threat, however, Pacts of other religious groups will band together when any one of them is attacked. At the highest levels even your co-religionists may feel the need to join forces against you.

Threat also affects both the size of Realms which can join a Pact against you, and the how far away from you they can be. Finally, AI nations will never join a Defensive Pact against a Realm whom they have equal or greater troop strength than.

As the new name might suggest, Defensive Pacts are entirely defensive in nature, members of a Pact can never call each other into an offensive war against the target (unless they are allies, as normal). These changes, we hope, will bring the Feature Formally Known As Coalition more in line with its intended purpose of countering huge, rapid growth without feeling as unfair or arbitrary.

2.5.2 also contains some other improvements and some new content and features. The patch notes will reveal full details, but a few more highlights include:

Improvements to Shattered Retreats.
Increased Warscore from battles slightly in general and majorly against hosts.
Capped total possible Warscore from battles for Attackers at 75%
Raiders who are defeated in battle will not return to raid you for some time.
Added a Next Song button, and a setting to disable the context restrictions on music.
Added faction to force abdication of kings and emperors.
Added new events for skilled educators to give traits to their wards.

Doomdark · Feb 15, 2016

Hi again folks!

Today I am going to talk about one of the great pitfalls of strategy game design; dull micromanagement. That is, features which require too much player attention. The trick, of course, is determining how much is “too much”, but it’s useful to consider how central the feature is to the core gameplay, how well it scales between small and large states, and how repetitive it gets with time.

In Stellaris, one feature which risked causing bad micromanagement was the planetary tile system; assigning Pops to tiles and deciding which buildings should go where. It is a fairly central feature and it is fun to use… but if you had to worry about 20, 50 or more planets, it would scale poorly. The obvious solution to this type of scaling issue is automation; you can let the AI handle it for you. This is indeed what we did in Stellaris, but not in a “traditional” fashion... Instead, we opted for something a little bit more akin to the vassals in Crusader Kings through something we call Administrative Sectors.

View attachment 158851

A Sector is an administrative region under the control of a Sector Governor. You can control a few planets directly (your “core worlds”), but once you go past the limit, you will start suffering penalties to your Influence as well as Empire-wide income. The exact limit for how many planets you can control directly depends on various factors, like your government type and technologies, but, as with the “Demesne Limit” in Crusader Kings II, it will never be a huge number. At this point, it is best to start dividing your territory into Sectors. You can decide the Sector capital and which planets should belong to it (but they must all be connected to the capital, i.e. form one cohesive sub-region.) You are also allowed to name your Sectors, for fun.

Unlike proper Vassals, Sectors remain an integrated part of your Empire, but they will handle development of planets and the construction of mining stations within their region for you. You can give them a focus (Industry, Research, etc), an infusion of Minerals or Energy Credits to help them along, and decide if you want to tax them for Minerals and Energy Credits. Sectors do not possess any military fleets of their own, nor do they perform research (they have access to the same technologies you do, and their research output is all given to you.)

View attachment 158852

While Sectors and Sector Governors cannot demand more autonomy, or directly rise up in revolt (things I’d love to explore in an expansion), over time their population tends to diverge ideologically from that of the regime, and create their own identity. Like-minded Pops will tend to migrate there if allowed to. In the same way, aliens of the same species will also tend to coalesce in the same Sectors. Thus, when Factions form, they will often tend to have their main seat of power in a specific Sector. And Factions can demand autonomy and achieve independence. However, this is something that warrants its own dev diary...

That’s all he wrote folks. This time. Next week, I plan to talk about Alliances and Federations!

podcat · Feb 12, 2016

Hello everyone! This weeks topic will be the side effects of war: Occupation and Resistance.

Resistance
The main goal of modeling local resistance in HOI4 is to remove whack-a-mole of rebels running around and to model the strategic problems with occupying large chunks of enemy territory.

Each occupied state you control has a resistance value indicating the strength of the resistance there. It will slowly grow over time. To reduce or halt growth you need to station troops in the area (preferably special divisions with military police support battalions which are very effective for this) or lower your occupation policy for the nation in question.

Johan · Feb 11, 2016

Hello and Welcome to another development diary for Europa Universalis IV. This time we take a look at a concept that neither we nor you have not been entirely happy with in any previous Paradox game: Espionage.

In the next major patch, we have completely reworked how espionage works. No longer is every spy action done by just sending a diplomat that will perform the action for as long as it is there, but now there is a concept of spy networks.

You now send a diplomat on a mission to a country to build up a spy network. The network can reach up to 100% power, and that power can be used to execute spy actions, such as sow discontent, fabricate claims, etc.

BjornB · Feb 11, 2016

//Edit// You can catch the VOD on our Paradox Extra Youtube Channel! Part 1 here!

The not so elusive DDRJake at his desk, preparing to re-enact the feats of Columbus together with our streaming producer and novice Europa Universalis IV player, cKnoor.

Europa Universalis IV for novice world conquerors: the STREAM, today @15:00CET -http://www.twitch.tv/paradoxinteractive

The stream will be available in the Twitch archives and uploaded to Youtube tomorrow.

BjornB · Feb 10, 2016

It's August 1941. The Soviet Union is falling to the might of the German Wehrmacht. Most of Europe has either been conquered or joined the invincible German War Machine. While in Africa the Allied forces, lead by Great Britain, is advancing against the weaker German allies. In occupied France, resistance is growing, will the Germans manage to control the unruly population? The allied forces, now bolstered with US troops are massing on the British isles. A D-Day landing seems inevitable, but will it be the turning point the free world is hoping for? The fate of Europe is in the balance.

Birken · Feb 9, 2016

Greetings!

It’s been a week since release and a lot of people have been playing Conclave. As usual, we have carefully listened to feedback from our players, and as @Doomdark explained last week, we’ve been looking into ways of improving the design and implementation of certain features. The two main areas of concern are Coalitions and Shattered Retreats, and we are currently testing the revised solutions. Read more about these changes in Conclave: The Near Future.

Doomdark · Feb 8, 2016

Hello everyone!

For today’s dev diary, I thought I’d talk about a crucial part of Stellaris; waging wars and making peace, because as you know, not all ETs are nice... The system is different from most strategy games out there, but should be familiar to anyone who has played a Paradox Development Studio title. In fact, it is probably most reminiscent of how these things work in the Europa Universalis games.

Let’s start at the beginning. When you declare war in Stellaris, you have to state what your aims are; what the war is actually about. You simply choose from a list of possible goals, where each one is listed with a certain cost. The total cost of your picked goals cannot exceed 100. If you have a good reason to take something, the cost will be reduced. This might be the case if, for example, members of your founding species happen to live on a planet, or if it has previously been a part of your empire.

Search

Crusader Kings III Available Now!