Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 20th of September 2022 - Post Release & Norse Easter Egg

[Pavía]

Hello everyone!

It's been a week since we released EUIV: Lions of the North and 1.34 'Sweden' update, and I'll start by saying that the entire team involved in it wants to thank the community for their great support. The feedback we have received so far has been very positive and we greatly appreciate the passion with which players have embraced this release. The teams that have worked on this project at Paradox Tinto and Paradox Interactive have put in a lot of effort, and we feel very rewarded to see this great reception. So let me say on behalf of us, thank you very much!

But even if the release has been really good from our point of view, there will always be issues appearing, and our goal is to continue to improve the state of EUIV. Therefore, we’re currently working on the first hotfix of the update, version 1.34.3, which will fix a bunch of issues reported since last week. Stay tuned, as it will be released in the next few days.

Apart from that, we also want to address today some content that was not previously revealed but was planned since we started designing Lions of the North: the Norse Easter Egg we included in it.

First question: Why was this content made secret? We had a couple of reasons behind this. The first is that even if we wanted to create some Norse-focused content, we also wanted to keep LotN’s focus on what we thought was its core content, the new deep, branching mission trees we were creating for the countries in the Baltic region. So we were a bit afraid about the new Norse content hijacking the LotN discussions and negatively affecting the general opinion on the other content (which was the main focus of the Immersion Pack, at the end of the day). On the other hand, we also thought that it would be interesting to create some secret content, as usually EUIV has not used so many ‘easter eggs’ compared to other GSGs; but it would also be a challenge, if created under certain conditions. So we went ahead with this overall design, even if we had to tackle some critics during the development process, especially in the dev diary devoted to Norway; at the time we were so adamant about adding more Norse content, because we had already added it to our development version, and we didn’t want to mess that up!

Second question: How do you become Norse? We know that many of you probably know the ways from the guides that this community has made, but we figured out it would be nice to give an official answer to this question, so that’s what we’re going to do with the help of my fellow colleague @Ogele , under a spoiler, as maybe some of you may not want to know the details about this.

Spoiler: New Norse content

There are two different ways of changing your religion to Norse: one is based on a lot of luck, the other is a lot more technically doable, but less flavorful.

Let’s start with the more flavorful way first. If you have the following conditions complete then the the event “A Wave of Curiosity” will fire:

• Your Primary Culture is either Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Icelandic
• The current age is the Age of Discovery
• You are Catholic
• You are independent
• You are either excommunicated or you declared Statute in Restraint of Appeals
• Your ruler is either a 5/5/5 or is a Scholar or is a Sinner
• You own the province of Bergslagen
• You have a lot of luck, as the event has a Mean Time to Happen of 100 years. This can be at least halved if you are excommunicated despite also having Religious Ideas

If you select the first option then your ruler will start to rethink his life choices and to question the purpose of the Catholic Church. This triggers a chain of events with each event having roughly ~2 years of time to happen:

Keep in mind that the event chain is immediately broken if you ever take the second option or if your ruler dies during his journey. And you also can get this event chain only once per campaign.

For those who are worried that the stars align and the AI gets the event: the AI will always pick the second option, immediately ending this event. So a Norse AI Scandinavia is impossible to see without player shenanigans.

However, luck is not always on one’s side. For those who want to become Norse without having to… get unfortunate “crashes” every 5 minutes, there is another way to achieve your goal. If you fulfill the following conditions the event “The Awakening of the Norse Faith” can fire with a Mean Time to Happen of 24 months:

• Your religion group is NOT Pagan
• Your primary is either Danish, Swedish, Norwegian or Icelandic
• Any owned province in Scandinavia is Animist and has animist rebels active
• The current age is the Age of Reformation

From there onwards you just use the normal rebels to get yourself force converted to Norse.

Some of you might be aware of a supposed third way of becoming Norse, which is through the Norwegian mission “The Colony of Greenland” and the event “The Lost Greenland Settlement”:

In the current game files, this event has been commented out (and this even rather early during development). While we did our research for the old Norse faith we had to accept that Iceland and Greenland had a much closer tie to the Church than mainland Scandinavia, which is why our first iteration of getting access to Norse had to be scrapped - it just wouldn’t have felt natural enough. So if you want to become Norse right now then doing the Norwegian Greenland mission won’t be your best bet. However, we’re always open to suggestions from the community, so maybe you can change our minds on this…

And that’s all for today. In the following weeks, we’ll have a more irregular Dev Diary schedule, as we’ll be focusing mostly on the Post Release Support, and we also need to take some rest after showing new content for 4 months. The team will let you know when we have new content ready to be shared, probably aiming for the 1.35 update. Until then, see you!

 

[Aldaron]

I was wary against including norse paganism because I feared you would make it too easy, but this seems rather nice and flavourful. I like that there is some consequences. Would be cool if the christian neighbours reacted to this reversion with outrage too.

I understand the reasoning of not having norse colonies in Greenland, but in a way you could argue that whoever led that colony at some point could have had a crisis of faith just like the swedish king in your example here. I'm fine with it either way.

I do wonder though why exactly Bergslagen has to be owned? There are many runestones all over Scandinavia. Is the one in Bergslagen very significant? Just seem kinda tilted in Sweden's favour.

Trollkyrka - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

So far is the closest to surviving Norse rituals that we know off.

 

[Pavía]

Hello there! Thanks again for your comments and feedback, it is very appreciated. We've been busy in the last week with the release of the 1.34.3 patch, so we've not been able to make a proper answer to the DD, although thanks to @Ryagi for keeping the fort while away!

---

Are there any plans for adding content to the Animist faith?

Not at this moment.

Hey Pavia,

Thanks for the great release. It's been a lot of fun. My personal MVP have been all the new government reforms. (and the change to courthouses)

A thought: can't we use the Pause in dev diaries to create community engagement without requiring too much effort on the dev teams behalve?

Specifically, it would be great to have some kind of "We're thinking about changing mechanic X, what does the community propose?", for example about the new centralize state government reform, changes in ideasets, ...

Wouldn't be too much effort on your behalf. Engages the community and creates forum activity. You get input on things you're actually working on. Seems like a win-win-win to me.

This is something we're thinking about, although it's early to advance anything on this topic. Suggestions about possible topics would be appreciated, nonetheless.

I'm interested that you found Iceland too Christian in history, considering there were tales well into the 19th century of people keeping the old faith, engaging in seið and holding blóts.

Tbh, I'm also somewhat appalled that you didn't add a separate Icelandic and Faroese mission tree but then again, you can't have it all.

The 19th century is the period of Romanticist nationalism where people were reaching to things from pre-Christian times as a source of distinct identity. A lot of information was exaggerated to be shown as examples of continuity (IE: Germany's Kontinuitätshypothese), created out of whole cloth, or taken out of context, such as galdrastafir. Now I don't know what specific accounts and interpretations you're talking about, but I am just saying that I would take anything from the 19th century with a grain of salt with regard to claims of pagan continuity.

It's good the Greenland option is commented out, it wouldn't make sense at all based on the history. Norse Greenland was pretty much heavily Christianized for 99% of the settlements' existence (Leif Erikson was, purportedly, a devout Christian and missionary for example), the Church was a major power and influence there for centuries, and the mainstay of Greenland's economy, walrus ivory, was closely associated with Christianity as much of that ivory was used for religious art. Our last record from Norse Greenland was even that of a marriage held at a church in the early 1400s. No one would've remembered anything about some "old ways."

In fact, when Scandinavians started exploring Greenland again and seeking remnants of the old Greenland colony (in the 1700s I think), it was partly done out of concern that these hypothetical Greenlanders were still Catholic, and the now Protestant Scandinavians wanted to convert them to the "right" form of Christianity.

Here's an alternative suggestion:

Most of what we know about modern Norse myths comes from the writings of Icelandic Poet Snorri Snorrelson (not sure if I got the spelling right), who was writing in I believe the 1400's, with the main goal of trying to foster a shared sense of scandinavian culture to foster better political ties between iceland and the mainland, but the secondary goal of preserving legends that were getting lost to time.

Similar to how in CK2 you have the option to read the hellenic classic and return to greek paganism, perhaps an option to go norse could be the following-
-play as iceland
-embraced the renaissance (a renewed look into classical works of the pagan era)
-employ a philosopher or artist

Maybe this unlocks a decision for the ruler of the nation to convert to norse. This wouldn't be too overpowered, as you would still have to convert your provinces from Catholicism to Norse, while still being Icleand which is one of the weakest nations and will have a very hard time fighting off annexation.

Alternatively, perhaps you could tie it into the reformation mechanic. The Catholic Church has gotten so corrupt that people are now shopping for alternative religions, that some even think going back to Norse would be the right call. I say this because it would jive well with the religious wars mechaninc in that era, but also because the idea of having a Norse center of reformation would be hilarious.

Also maybe for enhanced flavor there could be a Norse Runestones monument somewhere on the map to give bonuses to Norse nations. What I defintely think you should add though is the ability for norse nations to raid coasts. I mean it's pretty obvious, what with the viking thing. It'd buff the religion seriously making it a lot more fun to play, and add a lot of historical roleplaying. On that note- maybe another path could be you are playing as Pirate Republic Gotland, and during the Age of Reformation, if you elect a ruler that is crazy enough, they manage to convert to Norse. This makes a bit more sense since pirates tend to be a crazier bunch, and don't have the strongest ties with the Catholic Church to begin with.

Also while discussing paganism- a quick fix if you would to random new worlds. Random New Worlds don't include any of the new monuments added, which seriously nerfs any tags playing in them, as well as making colonization less interesting. I'm sure you guys can quickly code in monuments to be set to spawn in certain types of regions, maybe with random development levels too.

Yeah, this was also a controversial topic among the dev team, as we really tried to think about a way of opening this historical fantasia, while not being much immersion-breaking. One of the options we were thinking about was precisely the discovery of the writings of Snorri Sturluson, the famous Icelandic writer from the XIIIth c., although it looked to us a bit lackluster if not having proper content for Iceland. We also thought about the problems of the Greenland mission event, because we were aware that the Nordic settlements on the island were fully Christian by the time the contacts ceased.

Because of that, we decided on the Runestone event chain as one option, with the 'mechanical' option as the other (to not make it fully RNG-dependent).

Hello, @Pavía.

A while back I brought to Your attention some issues regarding misleading borders when releasing 2+ nations that share a core and the fact that Danzig appears much later than it did historically:

Unfortunately, those problems are still present in 1.34.2... I understand, we all are people and can forget about things.
Can I expect that this will be fixed?

Regarding the first issue, take notice of it, we're going to investigate it.

Regarding 'The Prussian Confederation', it is now a disaster that can trigger after 1450, so the revolt can start at some point in the following years.

Why do you make the AI always refuse the event chain? Even if you give it a 50% chance of accepting at each step the probability of it getting through the whole chain is 1/16, and this is assuming it has already met the conditions for the chain to fire. Wouldn't it be more interesting to play with a small but not zero chance of the AI going Norse?

Because we want this to be an easter egg for the player, we ruled out the AI of following this path.

Hello, @Pavia I a have a question: Does Ducal Prussia gets any additional content to make it brake free from Poland? Right now it gets annexed as if it was Danzig, have the same missions as Danzig, and it cannot be PU under Branderburg because it is a republic, which i think it shouldn't.

No, we haven't created extra content for Ducal Prussia. You can get different types of Prussia following the TO mission tree, though, including playing as Danzig, though.

Impossible to create Scandinavia if you accept these events. Can't use Caroleans either

The easter egg is really well thought out, the religious branching missions of at least Norway even factor it in. As in, you get a different few missions than the. Christians. My only gripe is that in the follow up event to convert to Norse culture, said culture is still in the Lost Cultures group, not the Nordic one.


EDIT: also somewhat related, I'd wish hope for basically all Pagan religions to have the "tolerated heretics" modifier. It doesn't really make sense for the Mayans to view the Aztecs as damn dirty heretics etc.

This is something we're taking a look at, although I can't promise any changes yet.

There is a lot of wonky English in these events, based on the screenshots in this dev diary, and I've noticed an increase in errors in newer content compared to pre-Leviathan. Could the dev team please have an editor proofread their text before it goes into the game? I'm really enjoying the content since Leviathan's release, but it sometimes stands out in a bad way compared to the older events, descriptions, and tooltips, which rarely had any errors.

Have to agree, I went through one of the DDs that showcased a lot of text pointing out all of the parts that do not read well in English if at all and there were quite a few examples.

This is something we've talked about a couple of teams before. After Paradox Tinto took the handover of EUIV, a lot of people with different backgrounds joined the team (as me, for instance). That means that not everybody here is a native English speaker. We are aware of the errors regarding localization, and we're improving the proofreading process of the new content, although it will take some time to fully adjust the process. This is a calculated risk, as we think that the people recruited for the team are very talented, and we're quite proud of the content created for Lions of the North, even if we have to continue improving some aspects, as this one you've pointed out.

I think similar content for Lithuanian pagans should have been added. They most likely still existed in the countryside in 1444 (Lithuania only formally converted in 1387 and initial conversion was probably limited to nobles) and the DLC did specifically focus on the Baltic area.

A bit fantastical, but well thought out event chain. I'm fine with a bit of alternate history as long as it's somewhat believable and thought out.

Shame that Suomenusko - or whatever you'd call it, Finnic? - and Romuva doesn't have similar events and constraints. Both of those religions were much more "alive" than Norse during the start of the New Age.

Also the Sami still have their religion as shamanism which is now the Fetishist religion in their country history file. Shamanism isn't in the game so they kinda would have to be Animist...

When it comes to a popularity contest, which this is, the Norse will always beat everything else, for better or worse.

While I don't exactly blame you for doing Yet More Silly Ahistorical Norse Stuff, because it's popular (much like Yet More Silly Ahistorical Byzantine Stuff)...

...it is really crappy that the actual living religion of the Sami is completely ignored in favour of reviving one that died centuries before the start date of the game. And as someone else pointed out, there is a lot more attested Lithuanian paganism around at this point too.

What about a possibility of adding Romuva for the Balts (Lithuania and Latgalia)? The religion was still practiced by the countryside people in 1444 and beyond that, especially in Samogitia.

I made a suggestion about it some time ago.

Not a fan of Norse content, the idea of pagan countries in Europe is fine but a Norse revival during Age of Discovery is a fantasy fanfic, the entire event chain remembers the supernatural events in CK2.
EU4 is full of fantasy fanfics anyway, so, Norse content could work fine but in this case this is not fine because there existed more immersive ways to make pagan countries in Europe playable.

More immersive and thematical ways to make pagan countries in Europe a viable possibility would be:
1- Pagan provinces in Sapmi land.
2- A event chain to revive Romuva faith in the Baltics, this faith makes much more sense to have remnants in 1444 when compared with the old Norse faith.

Considering that Sapmi and Baltics were regions inside the scope of Lions of the North but instead of pagan content about these 2 areas we get instead a Norse fanfic feels like a wasted opportunty.

We discussed the possibility of giving more content to Sapmi, Suomenusko, and Romuva, obviously! However, we had to prioritize some things among others in the development cycle. The Norse easter egg was possible because game mechanics already existed, and it didn't take much time to design and script it; however, giving a new set of mechanics to these religions would have taken more time, as we knew from implementing Judaism mechanics in Origins. We prioritized other parts of the content in the DLC, but specifically, we wanted the content to be as polished as possible, this time. Even if we had to renounce this, we were also able of adding other that was not initially planned, and we also achieved our objective of a smoother release, so... We're quite happy with the trade-off.

In the future would you consider a beta patch approach like what was done with 1.33? A lot of the bugs that filtered their way to 1.34.2 couldve easily been identified by the playerbase as opposed to some youtubers advertising mission trees (that are, in some cases bugged/incomplete). The DLC could have been advertised on the steam page as *BETA* warning players that it may still have bugs, while perhaps also giving a small 5-10% discount on it and raising the price after beta release.

Not for updates with new paid content, as that is very troublesome. I think that we've improved a lot the quality of releases with the changes we've been implementing to our QA workflow since 1.31, so we'll keep working on that line.

For technical updates not related to new DLCs, it may be, as 1.33 was quite successful, in our experience.