Most of the team is now off for the holidays, and the final remaining of us leaves today for up to two weeks of relaxations with friends and family.

The Europa Universalis IV team have worked very hard this year in making the foundations of a rather awesome game which has now reached the alpha stage, which means that the game is feature complete. When we get back from the holidays, the team will work towards the beta, where the remaining content gets into the game, including final events, tutorial and AI.

In the last two weeks, we've done quite a lot of multiplayer testing with QA Team and the Design Team.
It sounds a bit pretentious to say team when QA is 3 people and design team is me and King, but well

We have run multiple campaigns as the 5 western powers for the first 100-150 years to tweak the start of colonisation and expansion.
Constantly rotating players between countries and tweaking mechanics and balance to improve playability.

What we discovered was that the game, in this early stage, it is damn fun!
And sometimes you have to admit that you lost a war, and cut your losses.
Sometimes you become really proud of your accomplishments, and sometimes you go, why the hell did I just do that??

So what has worked out the best?
- Trade, where navies are vital.
- Monarch Power, the strategies are endless.
- Combat, the changes make warfare so much more fun and battles interesting.

OTOH, there are some interfaces that needs to be reworked to be easier to handle and give better interfaces, especially the diplomatic and province interfaces..

Here's a screenshot of my France in one of the sessions, a few months after the peace where I had finally defeated Burgundy and their perfidious allies..



We're back after January 6th to conquer the world and enslave humanity!

[video=youtube;W35yQuO4fq0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W35yQuO4fq0[/video]

 

[ikki]

With those players you STILL managed to seize Flanders?

You are either sickeningly good, or France is OP

Or then maybe hes just the boss of the other co-players
It might be dangerous to gang up on the boss and beat him silly

 

[unmerged(63836)]

I can't be 100% sure, but it seems that these early musketeer sprites no longer have bayonets - that's really nice.

 

[Freodin]

This seems to be a nice place and occasion to say a huge, heart-felt

THANK YOU!

For all the great games and the tons of fun you have given us... and are continuing to give us... and will give us in the future! (Oh, I just can't wait!)

Happy holidays, Johan, for you and the whole team!

 

[1alexey]

Like the advisor cost, it is high time for goverment to not be free.

I'd argue that I am currently one of the 3 best Eu4 players in the World though

out of 5 tht exist?

I can't be 100% sure, but it seems that these early musketeer sprites no longer have bayonets - that's really nice.

the game needs nato counters anyway.

 

[Captain Gars]

I can't be 100% sure, but it seems that these early musketeer sprites no longer have bayonets - that's really nice.

I asked our 3d artist to remove it a long time ago as it was inappropriate for the time period.

 

[Captain Gars]

It might be dangerous to gang up on the boss and beat him silly

It's more dangerous to actually trust him in multiplayer...

 

[Te. Kenzo]

I thing that i want to say, is that i love the graphics, for many the visual is not so important, but i like this "new style"
About the landed part of trade routes, instead of the dashed lines (that are great for trade routes) not could be better use a sort of "steets" or "path" on the map? I think should be more cool and nice to see with the beuty of the new map. If is a problem of "visibility" of the routes, could be added a mapmode to underline them.

Another detail, i see that in the bourgogne province there is a caravan but not a trade route, there is a reason?

 

[Jia Xu]

I hope the team enjoys their holidays.

Although I'm a little disappointed that there's no real DD this week. I always look forward to learning more about the game!

 

[adijarca]

Happy holidays.

Can I make a request?

Please fix Hungary's eastern borders. They should stop on the mountains, not go halfway into moldova.

 

[DominusNovus]

I get the holiday aspect and all, but I can't help but feel that referring to a dev diary that is released on the normal day, with less information than normal, as a 'bonus' dev diary is just kinda... mean.

 

[AlHasanAlbaghdadi]

Happy holidays.

Can I make a request?

Please fix Hungary's eastern borders. They should stop on the mountains, not go halfway into moldova.

They did mention they're going to fix map related stuff later on because they're not the most important thing in the world now

 

[Velho e Bom Joe]

Are the armies and ships actually moving around the map? Look at 0:28 and 0:31. you can also see at the screenshot, the British soldiers in Brabant.
I wonder what happens when you cancel their movement...
Looks interesting

 

[George LeS]

Spain was backing me up, as he wanted to take down the English empire..

I'd argue that I am currently one of the 3 best Eu4 players in the World though

When are you going to start playtesting, so maybe some of us can move you down the list?

 

[PiriReis]

Looks good.

 

[Zoft]

I thing that i want to say, is that i love the graphics, for many the visual is not so important, but i like this "new style"
About the landed part of trade routes, instead of the dashed lines (that are great for trade routes) not could be better use a sort of "steets" or "path" on the map? I think should be more cool and nice to see with the beuty of the new map. If is a problem of "visibility" of the routes, could be added a mapmode to underline them.

Another detail, i see that in the bourgogne province there is a caravan but not a trade route, there is a reason?

There is a trade map mode available where they are much less subtle.

The caravan is an travelling diplomat, the use of the caravan model is temporary and will be changed

 

[Assalander]

Enjoy your holidays.

I hope we'll have a DD about France at some point...

 

[Aquilegia]

I see that you have no colonial maintainance... Does this mean there is finally a reason for countries like England and France to start colonizing later, like in history? (and are there still places to colonize in the 17th century in your game?). That would be awesome!

 

[Tocsix]

Is it only me that think the game look way too bright at 29 seconds? I guess it's some kind of after effect (bloom, ambient occlusion etc). Can you make it possible that each after effect is a menu option so you can choose which one to keep and which one to disable?

Otherwise the game looks great so far, can't wait to play it!

 

[ryu2999]

Happy Holidays to all at Paradox!

 

[Alerias]

Enjoy your holidays, guys.

The video was a nice touch and comes with a glance at the various mapmodes.

For instance, this view of 1444 Europe is pretty nice. We can see the GC is called Rise of the Ottomans with the following flavortext;

Rumors of Ottoman weakness caused Pope Eugene 4 to call for a crusade against them in 1443. With the West still embroiled in the 100YW, the King of Hungary and Poland, Wldyslav 3, took on the cause to finally expel the scourge of Christendom from Europe. Led by general John Hunyadi, the "White Knight", the Hungarian army saw some initial success, but was ultimately defeated. The abdicated Sultan Murad 2 came back to aid his son and led the Ottoman army to victory at the battle of Varna, where King Wldyslav was killed. Peace was eventually signed, but the way for further Ottoman expansion into eastern Europe now lay open...

Which is an excellent scary backdrop that'll make Byzantium's swift resurgence all the more dramatic. Kudos.

I include the map here. Its just a screenshot of the 720p video so its a little blurry but better than nothing; i recommend downloading the image and viewing it at maximum res if you want to see anything. Its pretty much a straight import of the EU3 map at that date with a few changes (notice Austria owns her Styrian provinces, which only happened around 1460 in the old history files, Transylvania is already part of Hungary too as discussed in another thread) On other maps, I noticed Provence is already out of the HRE in 1444, whereas its still in at that date in Eu3.

Next to play, notice the promising checkbox "Allow players to hotjoin". Yummy.

One thing to notice in Johan's screenshot. 5 merchants! So far all the screens we saw had 2-3 as the upper limit, so his (relatively) good income situation can clearly be explained by picking trade-related ideas and tech, he clearly made a special effort to make this happen.