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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of January 2018

Good morning all. Tuesday has arrived and as usual delivers double excitement: the next episode in the EU4 Dev Clash, and a new development diary. Last week @Trin Tragula took the wheel and showed off the map changes which will roll out with the upcoming 1.25 update. Before we start talking about the features that come with its accompanying yet currently unannounced Immersion Pack, today I will be showing off another free change with 1.25, which is the Mission System.

Missions in EU3 were a real gamble. You hoped for a good or even possible mission and without hitting up the wiki or trawling through the game files had no idea what you could even be tasked with. You got said mission without choice and would either cancel or try to complete it. EU4 improved on this by always offering you up to 3 missions, one of which you would select and either complete or cancel before getting a new batch of missions. While it was an improvement, it still had the shortcomings of you not being quite sure what all missions you would be able to get for your nations, how to unlock them and even getting missions which would be detrimental for you to do. The missions system is something new players often look to for guidance and when it tells them to simply get 50 prestige or to improve relations with their rival, well, you can see why advice for new players can often counter intuitively be to ignore missions.

All this changes in 1.25 with the new Mission System. rather than picking from a short list of missions, all missions for your nation will be available from the very start, and as you fulfill the criteria for them, you will be alerted as such and can go to the newly segregated Missions tab to claim your reward. Rewards have been accordingly made more relevant, longer lasting and often grant claims towards more missions down the line. Let's take a look at the mission chain from one of my favourite nations, Byzantium, with their Purple Phoenix missions.

byz PP.jpg

humble expansion from my casual Byzantium campaign. Art/layout not final

All Byzantine missions are visible from the start and the progression through them is shown. When the budding Byzantine player reconquers Greece, they will be given a timed reward as well as the claims to help fulfilling the next missions: Recover Albania and Conquer Bulgaria. Once these are completed, they will again be able to claim their reward and work down the mission chain. The mission paths are also split for their different directions to go in, catering towards Western expansion, Anatolian recovery and reclaiming the islands. Mission rewards must be claimed in order, although all missions can be completed throughout a campaign.

byz no pp.jpg

End of the Byzantium mission chain without Purple Phoenix


All nations with specific missions are having those transferred over to this new system. Additionally we have added generic missions for all nations as well as region specific missions so that Europeans can have different missions available to them than, say, Africans or New World Natives. We have also taken the opportunity to clean up older missions while we adapt old ones to work with this new system.

France loveley art.jpg

French Missions, complete with lovely coder art. Something seems odd about the Hebrides though...

This mission change is a free part of the 1.25 Update and our aim is to have the missions feel more relevant for nations, as well as serving as a guiding light for newer players.

I'll try to pre-emptively answer some questions:

  • How do I select a mission?
    • Unlike the previous mission system, you do not select your missions, they are all visible from the game start. All missions at the top of the mission trees will be "active" and when you fulfill an active mission you can go to claim its reward, making any missions below it connected by arrows in its chain active,
  • In the old system selecting a mission would give you the claim/CB you need for the mission, how is that handled now?
    • In most cases, preceding missions will give claims/CBs as a reward which can be used to fulfill the following missions.
  • How does mission gating work?
    • A mission can both be a prerequisite for multiple missions a well as require multiple missions to be completed before it becomes active
  • How moddable is this?
    • Extensively.

Next week we'll start talking about what's coming with the yet unannounced Immersion Pack, due to release alongside 1.25. until then, we shall admire the Ottoman missions in the new system, in all their behemothic glory.

Ottomissions.jpg
 
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This is actually a stroke of genius! Taking something from the HOI games and implimenting it here... love it.
 
What happens with missions which asked you to build up to your naval or army force limit? I can see that Ottomans have that mission in their tree, but presumably once they've achieved that then it won't resurface again? Which is different from the current set up where you might get that mission over and over again?

Also, are the old style Diplomatic missions now dead? (Improve relations, integrate vassal etc etc)
 
This is great. I assume there will be a generic tree for countries that don't have a specific one yet.

The generic set is the 3 blocks you see at the center of the Ottoman tree shown here. Some regions have additional ones on top of that though.
 
I'm like this!
So nations are actually going for this? So we do get more historical outcomes?

Even in the old system national AIs prioritized their tag specific missions :)
But yes the idea is that they will try to fulfill those missions it makes sense for them to fulfill.
 
I do hope the missions will be a touch more varied, particularly with some sort of focus on the opposite of blobbing, but other than that this is looking very good. Long overdue feature.
 
Jake and Trin, the masters of teasing. Before loading this thread, I had hope to know the name of the next DLC :confused:

I guess one more weak then ...:(