Happy new 2016, everyone! With the holidays over, we now return to our regularly scheudeled Thursday dev diaries. Today we'll be talking about some changes coming in the upcoming 1.15 bugfixing and balancing patch, which is scheudled to be released sometime before the end of January.

The galaxy is vast, old and unknown. New species constantly flare into existence and some are even able to take their first cautious steps towards other stars. Of those that do some are arrogant enough to assume that they are the first and only chosen. They fail to realize that others may have taken those same steps before them, others who have found amazing wonders and unraveled their secrets, others who reached the furthest edges of knowledge only to crumble away. Those others are called Fallen Empires.

As some of you might have noticed there have been rumors of a new patch for Victoria 2 (the best paradox game). This started during summer when I was bored and reading forums but I only managed to get a few things done before vacation was over, then recently Wiz and Groogy got super pumped about spending their Christmas vacation on fixing stuff in Victoria and things started up again (we even guilt-tripped Sideburnout into make some event images). So Merry Christmas everyone!

Excerpt from lecture on Uplifting and Genetic Self-Improvement by Professor Xirg Ta’Nolek
Royal Science Academy, Nishga VI
Galactic Stardate 394.48 (Post-Upheaval Reckoning)
3 hours before unconditional surrender of planetary authorities

<recording starts>

Excellent. I’m glad so many of you could make it, given the present conditions. Especially you, Mr. Zeq-Zeq! Please, don’t let the sound of the orbital bombardment distract you.

Now then, let us begin! First I will be talking about the uplifting and genetic manipulation of pre-sentients.

Hi everyone, its Friday which means its time for another development diary. This one is all about our underwater friends: The Submarines!

The role of the submarine in Hearts of Iron IV is the same as it was historically: To hunt down enemy shipping and not have to challenge a superior enemy fleet directly to hurt them. Its a particularly attractive choice as Germany who will likely be facing Britain and the massive Royal Navy.

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Magicka 2 Receives Deadly Furious Ice in New
"Ice, Death, and Fury" DLC
New Boss Fights, Game Modes, Robes, Weapons, and Friendly-fire Incidents Included

STOCKHOLM — Dec. 15, 2015 — Paradox Interactive, a publisher of games for chill people, today released “Ice, Death, and Fury” for Magicka 2, a new DLC set which adds all new ways to play with your combustible companions. The DLC, which contains ice, death, and fury in a broad variety of styles and combinations, is available today for Windows, Mac, and Linux PCs, and the PlayStation®4 computer entertainment system. Magicka 2, the critically exclaimed game that lets you spell “success” using electrified healing steam, can be played in brand-new game modes using the new DLC, and also challenges players to new boss fights and new questionable fashion advice with a new set of robes and weapons. To get “Ice, Death, and Fury,” visit https://www.paradoxplaza.com/magicka-2-ice-death-and-fury.

Excerpt from lecture on Pre-Space Sentients by Professor Xirg Ta’Nolek
Royal Science Academy, Nishga VI
Galactic Stardate 394.41 (Post-Upheaval Reckoning)

<recording starts>

Settle down, class. Ah, as I look around the lecture hall and gaze upon your youthful visages, I am reminded of a younger, larval-stage me. Let’s hope you lot have more brains than I did back then!

Hey! So today we will talk about some mechanics we’ve added to make other rulers react to what happens in the world. We want to slow down the snowball and prolong the time it takes to conquer the world, so it shouldn’t be as easy to do. Snowballs are pretty evil, just like medieval rulers.

Just as with the shattered retreat mechanic we took inspiration from Europa Universalis 4 in our decision to add Coalitions. Our coalitions however are based on an Infamy value instead of Aggressive Expansion. You might recognize the name Infamy from our old games, but even though it shares the name it will work quite differently.

Time to fire up the rockets and head into space again, for another sojourn in the world of Stellaris. This week, I thought I’d talk about Policies and Edicts; directly corresponding to Laws and Decisions in our historical games. The general idea is to give you some additional control over the rules that define your Empire, usually with some trade-offs. Your initial choice of guiding Ethics will play a huge part in which of these Policies and Edicts are available, of course...

Hello everyone and welcome back to another development diary for Europa Universalis 4. With The Cossacks released, we'll now be getting back to non-feature related development diaries for a while. Before I start yammering on, however, I thought I'd let you know that we're currently working on a hotfix for 1.14, due to be released soon(tm). In addition to the hotfix, we're also working on a larger bugfixing patch (as we always do after an expansion) that currently has no decided ETA.

Since the hot topic the day seems to be the pricing of The Cossacks, I thought I would go ahead and address the bugbear in the room by explaining how we (we being EU4 specifically) price expansions.

Greetings everyone,
Changes to how owned items are registered on the forum has been made and it is awesome! All you need to get all your games registered is to follow the guide below!

New Europa Universalis expansion includes Leaderboards

The day has come! Europa Universalis IV: The Cossacks has arrived on digital storefronts around the world, bringing not just hosts of invaders and rebels, but a pile of new features, mechanics and improvements to the best-selling historical grand strategy game from Paradox Development Studio!

Hi Everyone!

Today I’m going show you a little more of an interface we spoiled part of in the dev diary from two weeks ago.
We’ve reworked the law view and instead of cramming everything into a single screen, it’s now divided into several tabs.

Hi folks!

It’s Monday and you all know what that means! Today I am going to talk about the technology system in Stellaris. If you have stayed up-to-date with the information flow, you probably know the basics already: there are three types of technology: Physics, Society and Engineering. Each one has its own research track, and each department is headed by a scientist character. You thus normally research three technologies in parallel.

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Greetings everyone!
With the upcoming release of Europa Universalis IV: Cossacks, Meneth, our eminent Wiki manager, will be running a contest with some awesome prizes!

For complete rules head on over to the Wiki and read all you need to know to participate. Oh, and best of all, you don't need to create a new account, you use your Paradox account credentials to contribute!

If there are questions related to the contest please use this thread instead of creating new ones.

Hello everyone and welcome back to yet another development diary for Europa Universalis 4. The release of the Cossacks and patch 1.14 is almost on us, so I thought I'd use the last dev diary before then to revisit the Random New World rework coming in 1.14 and explaining what exactly you'll be getting out of all the possibilities we discussed back in July.

Paradox Walks You Through Major Improvements
Just when you think you’ve mastered the grandest of grand strategy games, the developers come along and change everything again – for the better!

With Europa Universalis IV: Cossacks one week away, Project Lead Martin Anward thought you all should get a quick rundown of the major changes coming your way in this, the sixth major expansion to Paradox Development Studio’s hit historical strategy game.

Anward runs through the improvements we’ve made to domestic politics, diplomacy, culture, nomadic steppe nations and more. If you’ve missed our written developer diaries over the last few months, this six minute video will get you and all other Europa Universalis IV fans up to speed.

Good news everyone! We are back with another dev diary! This time we’ll look at the spaceport.

Spaceports are permanent off-world installations that, depending on size, may support thousands of crew and inhabitants, acting almost as a city in itself. As the main hub for anything moving planetside it becomes a natural focus for interstellar trade and production as well as a vital strategic point in any conflict. All types of ships are built and serviced in the spaceport, from smaller vessels like science ships to enormous battleships. As it is too large for a construction ship to build, the spaceport is instead constructed by an established colony. When finished, the spaceport orbits the planet offering basic off-world defenses and the ability to construct and repair ships. The spaceport starts out small and can be upgraded in steps, a total of five times, where each upgrade adds additional toughness, damage output, the ability to build larger ships and most importantly additional module slots.

Welcome back to the development diaries of Hearts of Iron IV. This week's diary is about the new system for civil wars and comes from the scripting side of the team, since this feature is closely tied to the political system and its events. I'm Rufus, scripter and content designer on Hearts of Iron IV, and have worked on many of the political events affecting the process you'll see a bit of today.

Rather than limiting the possibility of civil wars to a few predetermined countries such as Spain and China, the new system allows for any country to become divided over political differences if the conditions are right — or wrong, depending on which side of things you're standing when the war breaks out.

Greetings Earthlings!

We have spoken earlier about how the galaxy is generated, and today I aim to expand on that somewhat by telling you about the planets and how they differ from each other.

Planet Tiles
Each habitable planet has a number of tiles on its surface, representing the planet’s size. Some tiles might be blocked by natural barriers, such as mountains, and can be cleared to open up new space. When the galaxy is generated, each tile generates a random number and checks if a deposit will be spawned there. A tile can be worked by having a Pop placed in it.

Buildings can also be constructed in tiles, and they often have adjacency bonuses for the resource they are producing. Therefore it will be advantageous to construct your power plants in proximity to each other, to achieve optimal efficiency.