Good day and welcome to another EUIV Dev Diary. As mentioned last week, we are working towards our 1.28.3 bugfix patch as well as planning out our big European expansion for the year, and as such, won't be having meaty, feature-rich dev diaries for a while. Instead today, I'll dig a bit more into the 1.28.3 Patch, and some thoughts on suggestions towards our upcoming expansion.
While there are some very important issues that we're fixing in 1.28.3, including the Trade Company Stuttering and Save File issues, we are taking the opportunity to pack a lot more fixes into this release than we traditionally would in a hotfix. Since it'll likely be quite some time until the next big release for the game, we wanted to get cracking on outstanding issues while we could, which is why this bugfix patch is taking longer than normal too. At last check, it is over 100 bug-crushing entries long, so hopefully it proves worth the wait. We expect it'll see the light of day in the coming weeks, once we finish up the fixes, test it and have it ready to ship out.
To clarify, 1.28.3 is a purely bugfix patch. It won't have new content, map changes or any of the like. It is the result of the past weeks' efforts, with particular attention to script and content fixes. Some specifics pulled from the changelog include:
- Updated British missions for India map changes
- Texas' leader names and ship names have been made more Texan.
- Streltsy events will no longer attempt to change Streltsy Progress if you have Streltsy units but no longer use the Russian government reforms.
- Fixed AI refusing Royal Marriage because of too many diplomatic relations, despite already having Alliance.
- Spain's Golden Century mission "Claim Hispaniola" now shows the correct number of provinces needed to complete the mission.
- Spain's "Found Havana" mission can also be completed by building a counting house
- Ryukyu's tributary status with Ming ends in 1609.
With a pinch of luck we'll have the full patchnotes next week, and the release of the patch the week after. This is, of course, subject to testing going well and the patch being ready for release.
As I did last week, I'd also like to give a nod and some thoughts on suggestions which have been coming in. Again, these do not come with a promise of things to come, just thoughts on matters.
Balkan Suggestions
Too many Balkan suggestion threads to single one out, so cheers to @Sanguine Caesar who put together this compilation. I saw some conjecture about the target regions of the large European expansion and, in particular, if it would include the Balkans. If I remember my initial words well, I had originally said we'll be focusing on the map from Brest to Istanbul. To put that conjecture to rest (maybe) , I'll clarify that our ambition is to target France, Low Countries, Germany, Italy and the Balkans. This ambition may grow or shrink as the year goes on and we get to work, but this is what we're setting out to do. And by this, we don't exclusively mean map content, there's content planned for these target areas even if the map isn't in need of much work. The Low Countries provinces for example saw a good deal of love in the England update but who doesn't dream of a Dutch Revolt that doesn't just mechanically result in 250,000 angry Dutch rebels standing in Antwerp forevermore?
1440p/2160p support
@zersetzung brings this suggestion, and is far from the first to do so. A personal pet peeve of mine is when I want to fire up an old game, and it is void of graphical options to make it somewhat playable on a modern machine. I can hardly blame the 90's for not seeing over twenty years into the future, but the frustration is still there.
In the far flung future there will certainly be those who maintain that Europa Universalis IV is the best EU experience, superior to EU8 because the haptic battle feedback and conquistador hat supply chain system aren't the true map painting experience. For the enlightened supercitizens of the future, it would at least be nice to leave EUIV in a state where it can handle the ever growing resolutions of monitors with some level of UI scaling. I can't promise this is something we'll manage for this year, as it's far from a trivial undertaking, but consider it an ambition to someday have this in EU4.
Christmas Trees
I had to bring this one up because as I was going through the suggestion pages over the festives, it brought a smile to my face. A cute idea, and shows that not all suggestions have to be enormous and complex. I know some people see the scale of large suggestion threads and get intimidated away from making their own, but often wee suggestions have just as much merit, such as..
plz also change the swiss idea of -15% merc upkeep to increased condottieri. as switzerland was not hiring mercs for themselves but hired swiss soldiers to others
A simple, concise and sensible suggestion, one that is likely to happen too, but given that Switzerland is right in the middle (quite possibly literally in the middle) of the focus region, and that we want to address the mercenary system, I wouldn't be surprised if we give the Swiss some more special treatment in this regard.
As I said, next week we'll be hoping to finalize and share the patchnotes for 1.28.3. Once we have that done and released to the world, it'll be time to set our sights on our end of year expansion. Dev Diaries will likely remain sparse for a while, as the locomotive heats up and sets out on the long journey that is our 2019 Expansion.
While there are some very important issues that we're fixing in 1.28.3, including the Trade Company Stuttering and Save File issues, we are taking the opportunity to pack a lot more fixes into this release than we traditionally would in a hotfix. Since it'll likely be quite some time until the next big release for the game, we wanted to get cracking on outstanding issues while we could, which is why this bugfix patch is taking longer than normal too. At last check, it is over 100 bug-crushing entries long, so hopefully it proves worth the wait. We expect it'll see the light of day in the coming weeks, once we finish up the fixes, test it and have it ready to ship out.
To clarify, 1.28.3 is a purely bugfix patch. It won't have new content, map changes or any of the like. It is the result of the past weeks' efforts, with particular attention to script and content fixes. Some specifics pulled from the changelog include:
- Updated British missions for India map changes
- Texas' leader names and ship names have been made more Texan.
- Streltsy events will no longer attempt to change Streltsy Progress if you have Streltsy units but no longer use the Russian government reforms.
- Fixed AI refusing Royal Marriage because of too many diplomatic relations, despite already having Alliance.
- Spain's Golden Century mission "Claim Hispaniola" now shows the correct number of provinces needed to complete the mission.
- Spain's "Found Havana" mission can also be completed by building a counting house
- Ryukyu's tributary status with Ming ends in 1609.
With a pinch of luck we'll have the full patchnotes next week, and the release of the patch the week after. This is, of course, subject to testing going well and the patch being ready for release.
As I did last week, I'd also like to give a nod and some thoughts on suggestions which have been coming in. Again, these do not come with a promise of things to come, just thoughts on matters.
Balkan Suggestions
Too many Balkan suggestion threads to single one out, so cheers to @Sanguine Caesar who put together this compilation. I saw some conjecture about the target regions of the large European expansion and, in particular, if it would include the Balkans. If I remember my initial words well, I had originally said we'll be focusing on the map from Brest to Istanbul. To put that conjecture to rest (maybe) , I'll clarify that our ambition is to target France, Low Countries, Germany, Italy and the Balkans. This ambition may grow or shrink as the year goes on and we get to work, but this is what we're setting out to do. And by this, we don't exclusively mean map content, there's content planned for these target areas even if the map isn't in need of much work. The Low Countries provinces for example saw a good deal of love in the England update but who doesn't dream of a Dutch Revolt that doesn't just mechanically result in 250,000 angry Dutch rebels standing in Antwerp forevermore?
1440p/2160p support
@zersetzung brings this suggestion, and is far from the first to do so. A personal pet peeve of mine is when I want to fire up an old game, and it is void of graphical options to make it somewhat playable on a modern machine. I can hardly blame the 90's for not seeing over twenty years into the future, but the frustration is still there.
In the far flung future there will certainly be those who maintain that Europa Universalis IV is the best EU experience, superior to EU8 because the haptic battle feedback and conquistador hat supply chain system aren't the true map painting experience. For the enlightened supercitizens of the future, it would at least be nice to leave EUIV in a state where it can handle the ever growing resolutions of monitors with some level of UI scaling. I can't promise this is something we'll manage for this year, as it's far from a trivial undertaking, but consider it an ambition to someday have this in EU4.
Christmas Trees
I had to bring this one up because as I was going through the suggestion pages over the festives, it brought a smile to my face. A cute idea, and shows that not all suggestions have to be enormous and complex. I know some people see the scale of large suggestion threads and get intimidated away from making their own, but often wee suggestions have just as much merit, such as..
plz also change the swiss idea of -15% merc upkeep to increased condottieri. as switzerland was not hiring mercs for themselves but hired swiss soldiers to others
A simple, concise and sensible suggestion, one that is likely to happen too, but given that Switzerland is right in the middle (quite possibly literally in the middle) of the focus region, and that we want to address the mercenary system, I wouldn't be surprised if we give the Swiss some more special treatment in this regard.
As I said, next week we'll be hoping to finalize and share the patchnotes for 1.28.3. Once we have that done and released to the world, it'll be time to set our sights on our end of year expansion. Dev Diaries will likely remain sparse for a while, as the locomotive heats up and sets out on the long journey that is our 2019 Expansion.
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