Europa Universalis IV - 8 June 2021 - New monuments chosen for 1.31.5

[Pavía]

First, thanks for your kind comments!

Nice! Will there be missions for some of the nations affected? For example, Spain could have a small mission to upgrade El Escorial, and could be tied to winning a battle against a rival. In fact, El Escorial was built as a result of the Battle of San Quintín against France. Also, they have a mission related to Potosi, which could reward monument upgrade bonus to the colonial subject owning that province so that they can upgrade it.

We'll rework current missions, events and modifiers for this set of new monuments, yes. Probably at the first moment that will be done as with Versailles and Forbidden City decisions, so they'd depend on available DLC of the player, but perhaps in the future we can rework them in the style you're suggesting.

Interesting. Just one thing bothers me. Why do all muslim monuments give positive piety? One granting mysticism would be a nice change (iirc the samarkhand one did in its first iteration)

We're currently balancing that, so any of the current piety monuments would give mysticism instead of legalism.

Looking forward to them. A map mode showing the monuments would be very useful as well.

It will be added in 1.31.5.

When listing the benefits, it would also be useful to list the requirements (religion, culture?)

Well, I didn't put them because the post would be too blobby IMHO, but they will be:

- No requirements: Potosí and Belém Tower.
- Culture requirements: El Escorial (Iberian group).
- Religious: Muslim (Kaaba and Djenné), Muslim, Christian or Jewish (Jerusalem), Confucian (Hue).

Nice addition. I hope Korea & Italy & Germany get monument next time.

Santa Maria del Fiore and Brandenburg Gate were really closed on being added, so those will probably be part of next addition wave.

Shouldn't the Jerusalem one be more about tolerance than conversion? Also most of the Spanish Empire's silver came from Potosi. Maybe it should give a bonus to filling up treasure fleets.

That's an interesting focus about Jerusalem; we'll be thinking about that for next versions, for sure, as some rework may be done.

@Pavía

For future references and suggestions, what would constitute a great project/monument?

You've got a huge bunch of proposal in Monument Megathread, of very different types. We'll try to keep a balance between history, geography and gameplay when choosing and adding more.

I find it odd that the Dai Viet one only gives Confucian bonus and no Buddhist bonus when Dai Viet can go either way. I would expect it to have a karma decay modifier as well.

We'll think about that, for sure.

 

[Sidolowka]

More sources of Harmony? Great.

Portugal finally loses their ahistorical monument and instead has the community-voted one added? Amazing.

Mecca and Jerusalem both get monuments? Perfect.

Also excited to see that missionary strength against heathens is now a thing.

This almost persuaded me to buy Leviathan, fixing concentrate development and giving Korea a monument might actually push me over the edge. *wink*

 

[NIborGER]

Interesting. Just one thing bothers me. Why do all muslim monuments give positive piety? One granting mysticism would be a nice change (iirc the samarkhand one did in its first iteration)

 

[pingouin2ter]

Looking forward to them. A map mode showing the monuments would be very useful as well.

 

[Johan]

Grande Pavía! Finally we have a spaniard inside giving Spain the love it deserves among so many anglo lover.

Heh.. we have 19 employees at tinto so far.. 3 swedes, 2 brits, 1 german and the rest from Spain.

 

[AnssiA]

When listing the benefits, it would also be useful to list the requirements (religion, culture?)

 

[Pavía]

Grande Pavía! Finally we have a spaniard inside giving Spain the love it deserves among so many anglo lover.

As Johan just said, we're right now a multinational team here at Tinto. That will be interesting in the next days, as Euro goes on.

Looks quite interesting, I wonder if we going to have more new stuff with this update

@Pavía , do you plan to release it as a beta first like 1.31.4 ?

hope to play with this update soon

Yes, we're going to release 1.31.5 first as a beta, take account of stability and bug issues, and then continue working on fixing.

Nice selection, but I am surprised the Brandenburg Gate didn't make it since I saw a lot of votes for it.

If there will ever be a round focussed on monuments in the German region, we have quite a lot to choose from - many of which relevant to the HRE as a whole:
- Hofburg or St. Stephans
- Herrenhausen Gardens
- Aachen Cathedral
- Ulmer Minster
- Speyer Cathedral
- Brandenburg Gate
- Sanssouci
- Dresden Zwinger
- Malbork Castle


I really hope that monuments will continue to get expanded on, but I also feel like monuments should be tied to certain ages or finished NI milestones to ground them more - as they are right now they feel a bit too ahistorical in terms of their requirements.

There are really a lot of monuments that may be added worldwide, and we may also some requirements/modifiers rework on the future, as versions get more stable, and we have enough feedback to better balance things out.

Those look like some good Monuments!

Has there been any thought given to the universal costs/time of each monument, perhaps some giving lesser bonuses being cheaper/quicker to build?

We're going to do some changes on monuments upgrade and speeding up cost in 1.31.5, but we're already thinking on improving it in future patches.

@Pavía Lovely… more monuments…

Could we expect at some point an option to disable all the wonderful additions of Leviathan and to play in a (slightly) more believable world, one where special buildings don’t give magical bonuses and natives don’t blockade the colonisées (from what I heard, since I never bothered to play 1.31)?

Well, it's really easy to take care of this if you don't really like Leviathan features. Meanwhile, we'll continue working on improving the content both for the DLC and the 1.31 versions.

This is nice, but shouldn't the priority be to fix the major bugs and errors still remaining in the 1.31 update group before moving on to new content? Or is it being done simultaneously?

We shall fix a bunch of bugs and issues in 1.31.5 apart from adding monuments, and our roadmap for the next few weeks is to keep working on fixing stuff.

 

[Muelleri]

Nice addition. I hope Korea & Italy & Germany get monument next time.

 

[Pavía]

Paradox... I feel like you forgot that Dai Viet starts as Mahayana, is one of the very few Mahayana tags, and has achievements to stay Mahayana. You have essentially railroaded players into converting to Confucian every game.

Already fixed.

Fantastic news. A Manueline style building, and an iconic one and relevant to the timeline. Wonderfull.

A suggestion of I may, wouldn't it be better to buff Marines or increase the amount of units available for recruitment instead of manpower? Since lvl 2 and 3 increases the sailor amount, it would work better for the Portuguese Player to send Marines instead of army units around the globe.

We decided to keep the Manpower modifier from Pena Palace as it fits the barracks that Philip II ordered to build by the tower in 1580's. Anyway, we can take into account the Marine modifier in further versions, although Portugal already has an edge in that type of warfare.

Interesting! I'm glad you're deciding to do more monuments than the initial 3. I'm also happy to see this post on the account of given feedback. This always encourages to give more feedback!

A question: the monuments currently on the holy sites, do they the replace the province modifiers as well? If not: great! If so: losing the missionary will hurt!

I really like the artwork of the monuments too.

Also, a return of the weekly dev diaries? (I hope)

Nice to see a fellow historian working at Paradox, makes me happy
About the monuments, I really loved the choices and the art style. Kaaba and Jerusalem are a must, and I'm glad they'll be added soon. Will The Conquest of Jerusalem modifier still exist or will it be replaced by the monument modifiers?

As I said previously, we'll rework on the existing modifiers of some provinces, events and missions, so they fit the new monuments properly.

May I suggest Kaaba gives Mysticism instead of Warscore vs Heathens?

That could be taken into account, OFC.

Looks nice! Although I think El Escorial should require being catholic as well. It's a monastery after all and the way it works right now it coud be used by Granada/Andalusia being muslim countries

It was already in our minds as El Escorial is actually a palace-monastery, you're right. Finally, we decided to give it the Iberian culture requirement, so it works pretty much as Versailles and the Tower of London.

add something for easter europe malbork or something its sick how you ignore that part of a world

Malbork Castle was already proposed in the 12 monuments vote list. To be clear, the remaining monuments in that list is our current 'shortlist' of next monuments to be added, sooner or later.

Wonderful! Excited to see these new mechanics in action and how the balance is managed for them.
Any updates on a map mode to show monuments and their upgrade status? That is my main gripe, it's just hard to find them unless you know where they are.

Cheers Tinto! Thanks for the continued hard work!

As I already announced, there will be a monuments map mode in 1.31.5.

 

[SRBnoob]

WHERE ARE MY PYRAMIDS IN BOSNIA PARADOX?WHERE ARE THEY?
WE WANT THIS IN GAME NOT SOME RANDOM THINGS IN SPAIN AND SOUTH AMERICA
THIS IS A REAAAAAAAAAAAL MONUMENT:

 

[Pavía]

Again, thanks everybody for your kind words, and the good reception for the new monuments; now we can see reactions to the post, and they're already pretty positive!

Very nice changes! I just have a few points/questions, some have already been asked and even answered like the Jerusalem holy city maybe being more about religious unity whereas the Kaaba could be more about conversion, but my main question would be:

Since the holy city now gives an extra missionary at lvl 3, will the missionary from having Jerusalem itself disappear?

Will the monuments give extra bonuses for building them on top of controlling the holy cities as various religions, or will they completely replace them? Will Christian denominations no longer get a bonus for controlling Mecca and Medina for instance?

Will conquering Jerusalem and Mecca still give you an extra missionary? If not I’d consider it a big nerf especially for European countries trying to conquer Mecca.

Jerusalem modifier will be replaced for people with Leviathan by the monument itself, as it can be used by Muslims, Christians and Jewish. For people without Leviathan, the modifier will remain as it is.

About Mecca modifier, it will also remain, as the modifier is only for Christian countries, while the Kaaba monument is restricted to Muslim countries.

No love for Korea...?

It's not like there's a lack of historically important monuments in the Peninsula, nor the lack of Korean players to incentivise doing so - both Japan and China get three monuments each, Korea having zero's kinda sad.

Mt. Paektu is a must, imo. If Jp has Fuji. Why not Korea would have Paektu. Given the Korea and Manchu MT has some flavour related Mt Paektu. Some other korean man made would be nice as well.

We already have some suggestions for Korea in our 'long list', and it's a region where a monument would be worth. Can't promise when we'd be able to add more monuments to the game, we'll have to think about it in the next months.

Dai Viet already has +1 Yearly legitimacy in her ideas. Too much legitimacy in my opinion.
Since the Imperial City of Hue was technically one of many Vietnamese star forts. Maybe you should consider replacing legitimacy with a defense/fort modifier.

Good suggestions. For the moment we'll keep the Legitimacy modifier, but that can be changed in a future version, OFC.

I welcome the new additions, altough i'm pretty saddened by the fact that the only other monument being considered for future addition in Italy is S. Maria del Fiore in Florence. There are plenty of equally iconic buildings in the peninsula, staying on sacred ones you could think of many like the Duomo of Milan or the Holy complex of Pisa with its world renown leaning tower.
I have not understood clearly what you guys think constitues a monument, i think it might have to do with the fact that, i assume, multiple people worked on them so each one of you had a different idea on that and the final outcome wasn't very standardized. For example I'm pretty baffled by the fact that Stonehenge is a monument (maybe you just needed at least one thing for pagans?) while something like the largest industrial complex in Europe before the industrial revolution, the Venetian Arsenal, isn't. No big deal tho, i guess that the list of possible future additions can grow some more!

Again, we already received a lot of good suggestions in Monuments Megathread, for new monuments in Milan, Venice, Pisa, Naples... We'll take that into account and decide when the time comes.

Exciting changes! I’m glad to see that you’re listening to community feedback. While you’re at it, could Moscow’s monument be changed to St. Basil’s Cathedral? That’d make far more historical sense, and it’s what many people (even if wrongly) think of when they hear “Kremlin”, anyway.

Also, while I’m at it, I really hope that the new Monuments mapmode is integrated into an existing mapmode— my candidate being Government— rather than set out all on its own. We have far too many mapmodes that individually don’t provide enough information to be useful, such as Metropolitan (which should really be integrated into the Religious mapmode, along with cardinals).

St. Basil's already suggested as a monument, we'll study about that (although 'The Kremlin' is not so bad IMHO).

About the map mode, it will be a separated one for the moment. Perhaps in the future we could think about doing some merging, but we'll see.

Question: Can something be done with monuments that you don't fullfill requiremtns for? Ideally, if you upgrade them you get nice perks with cultures/relgions that benefit from them: e.g. upgrading one of the monuments that require to be Buddihst will increase tolerance of them in your nation despite your actual religion.

I think that, overall, the requirements system for monuments doesn't work ATM as we'd desire; or, said in other words, that it could work better than it does now. We're already thinking about that for future versions, but I'll ask for some patience to reach a much more satisfying solution to it.

Can we have a mechanic penalizing Pokemoning monuments by bloody rape pillage and murder?

Taking monuments linked to religions/cultures other than one's own should cause a penalty with all nations of said religion/culture at the very least lowering diplomatic relations and probably also increasing revolt risk in provinces of said culture/religion and giving a CB to "reclaim our heritage" to nations of the given religion/culture.

This could have an interesting benefit of actually giving a reason to establish client states/vassals so that the monuments would be owned by (subject) nation of appropriate culture/religion and let one avoid the penalty.

There have been some interesting suggestions along this way of thinking. Again, we'll think if we can revamp the feature to make it more interesting in the future.

Can we have the cathedral of Aachen as a monument. The place where the emperor was crowned? Surely that one was more important than the cathedral of cologne that wasn't even finished until the 19. century or a castle in Austria I didn't even know existed.

Already in Germany's 'long list', with a bunch of other monuments.

Wow, a Vietnam monument, I did not expect this. This is great, my country is getting representation. Thank you a lot Paradox team.

Edit:

@Pavía could we have some change to the Vietnam's mission 'The Imperial Citadel' so that it can be tied in with this monument?

Maybe instead of a 30 development requirement, the mission would require construction of the 1st tier of the monument and a lower requirement in development (maybe 20)? Or maybe, having a discount for construction of the monument as a reward instead of the current reward?

I am new to EU IV so I am not sure if there is other missions for other countries that directly referring to a monument. However, since the Dai Viet's mission and the upcoming monument are both referencing the same object, I just think that it should be connected somehow.

Glad that you're happy about having proper cultural representation. I for me will say that Vietnam is a beautiful country, with lots of interesting monuments, and adding one is worth it, IMHO.

That said, this mission will be changed for 1.31.5, so the reward for it will be adding 1 tier to the monument.

 

[AFKaiser]

Nice! Will there be missions for some of the nations affected? For example, Spain could have a small mission to upgrade El Escorial, and could be tied to winning a battle against a rival. In fact, El Escorial was built as a result of the Battle of San Quintín against France. Also, they have a mission related to Potosi, which could reward monument upgrade bonus to the colonial subject owning that province so that they can upgrade it.

 

[Metz]

Shouldn't the Jerusalem one be more about tolerance than conversion? Also most of the Spanish Empire's silver came from Potosi. Maybe it should give a bonus to filling up treasure fleets.

 

[Malatesta]

Aplausos*! Great!


*Applause

 

[elessar9]

Oh, and I also hold a Ph.D. in Medieval History, but that’s probably the less important thing in my current CV

Actually, I think this is maybe the most important one!

Anyway, the additions look great, and I'm pleasantly surprised we don't have to wait for 1.32 for these to be implemented.

 

[Aldaron]

Good stuff overall, especially promising to see you guys changing an existing monument to another that is more fitting.
Kind of wish you went with Casa de Contratación instead of El Escorial as I think that would fit the theme better, but overall good additions

It was discussed, but we all agreed in the end that El Escorial is more "majestic" as a building.

 

[Pavía]

I have an idea:
How about dynamic artwork for monuments ? As you upgrade your monument to the next stage, the artwork changes slightly
Kind of like how the art for forts changes in the siege view as the siege progresses. (But obviously in reverse )
I know the art team already has a lot on their plate regarding monuments, so it could be applied on a few of the monuments rather than all of them, and the artwork doesn’t have to change significantly.

for example older monument which were constructed before the games timeline, like the great pyramids could look worn out and rocky, and once you finally upgrade it to the final stage, it’ll look all shiny and white like the days it was first constructed.
For the monuments which were constructed during the games timeline, the beginning stages could show the monuments under construction, and the final stages could show it fully constructed.

I think it’d give a lot more satisfaction to the player too!

This is a fantastic idea, but I don't think they will do it because it will require a lot of work from the artists. And they probably want to dedicate more resources to content that they can monetize rather than improve features we've already paid for (unfortunately).

Well, think about this as a math problem. We already have about 50 monuments. Having dynamic artwork for each level would mean having another 100 images of similar quality instead of those in the game.

Instead of that, we could have Art Team working on having 100 new images for 100 new monuments. What would make community happier? As a former long-time player, I'd think the second path is the best.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying that we'll do another 100 new monuments. That's a decision we've not taken yet. Anyway, answering the second post, we're already improving features players have already paid for (these new monuments are a good example, IMHO), and we'll do it for a while, as we're currently working hard to improve the state of the game.

How will the Tower of Belém monument Interact with the Tower of Belém event?

I assume the Tower of Belém event still happens for those without Leviathan, but what about for those with it?

Do they still get the event to Build the tower? Do they lose the event? Or will they get a different event instead?

And in that case, what about the +25% Defensiveness modifier that Lisbon would normally get from the Tower of Belém event? This new monument doesn't have any defensiveness modifiers, so does this mean Leviathan owners will still get the defensiveness modifier from the event or will they lose the defensiveness bonus?

This tower was first and foremost a defensive structure, it's primary effect should be local defensiveness, so if it's not part of the monument itself, it should at least remain part of the event bonus for Leviathan owners.

Belém Tower event will have two different effects for people with or without Leviathan.

I don't really understand Austria's national monument being anything but Schönbrunn palace. Also, the Ottomans aren't able to use the pyramids of Giza after their historical conquest of Egypt. Is that intentional?

It is frustrating to play paid content only to have every other monument locked behind a cultural or religious barrier. Monuments are flexible and are often twisted to the uses of conquerors. It is quite historical, actually, to reappropriate the symbols of the past (a famous example being Hagia Sophia). Maybe some kind of decision?

Some ancient monuments requirements (Parthenon, Petra and Pyramids) are a bit reworked for 1.31.5. Anyway, we'll continue thinking about monuments requirements for future patches.

well... time to conquer spain , and accept their culture!

for Jerusalem, does it stack with current modifier? or will it lead to a removal?

I read in a separate thread that the monuments of Jerusalem and Kaaba are replacing the triggered modifiers. Users playing without leviathan have the triggers as usual still.

Jerusalem province modifier will be replaced by the monument for people with Leviathan, while Mecca province modifier will remain, as it's for Christian countries, while Kaaba is only useful for Muslim countries.

Good, but sorry, Potosí shouldn't have been even considered for Monument.
The city passed from 165k inhabitants in 1625 to 70k en 1750, and finally just 8k in 1825 when mines were exhausted. The loss of precious metals was extremely fast, not even the population lasted, contrary to monuments which are meant to last.

With Potosí, just make Cuzco and Mexico City a monument. (But hey, actually you can't take a real life man made edification from those as a monument, not a city or mountain, as for example Tenochtitlan temples as monuments but only work for Aztec culture and religion).

But Potosí truly doesn't fit the concept of monument.

How could you upgrade such monument when in real life it ONLY declined??

I strongly recommend taking some from the Flavor Universalis mod. Estern Europe, Africa, and Asia need some monumental love.

It already is.

The solution is simple: tie it to whether or not the precious metals of the province are depleted. The upgrades could be justified as "expanding mining operations". Duh.

Ahhh, no, didn't see, my bad.

And yes, that can be a solution, but still doesn't fill completely the monumentality concept of others.

We replaced the +3 produced goods Potosí province modifier for a +1 produced goods modifiers in each tier of the monument. So, the point is investing in the great mine exploitation will give you more money, as historically happened, instead of just taking and exploiting the province. As Potosí doesn't have any requirements, that can be done by Andean countries, but also by foreign conquerors.

From my personal POV, having 165K inhabitants in a place as Potosí in 1625 is pretty impressive; but the idea about its "monumentality" was also shared by other members of the team, and the people that voted it. Anyway, adding some effects about the mine depletion is an interesting suggestion, we'll think about how that fits the current monuments feature.

 

[Pizzicato]

Nothing about the expand empire cb causing too much agressive expansion has been said yet. Are we finally going to see fixes to game breaking bugs in this patch?

Please...please... Fix the bugs first. You can't play the HRE emperor right now because of the expand empire cb bug. It's frustrating. I've been wanting to play Austria for months and wasted many hours testing to see if the glitch has been fixed yet.

As @Mordred Viking said, different people work on different areas. Just because today we announced new Monuments does not mean we do not work on bug fixes or that we are sacrificing bug fixes for them.

In your specific case the expand empire AE bug should be fixed for 1.31.5 as far as I can see.

 

[Siddy00]

Dissapoiting to see El Escorial and Potosi after it was brought up that there might have been vote tampering with those two.

Is there a concerted campaign to rig the monument vote ?

When Johan posted about the monument vote earlier today, answers started coming in and at first there was nothing weird about them. But for the past few hours, a tidal wave of new votes have been coming in supporting the same monuments (Escorial...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

I'm actually impressed by the way they handled this. I imagine there'd have been backlash regardless of whether they respected the vote (which can be argued to be rigged) or disqualified those monuments (while people actually voted for them). Instead they decided to pick an additional three monuments to add right now, for a total of six rather than three. I honestly don't see any reason for complaining.

Besides, keep in mind that they already said they are planning to add all of those monuments at some point (or that they are on the shortlist, in any case); all we were voting for was priority. If you're missing any particular monument in this update, it might very well be added in the next one