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]

 

[apg]

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

So that just means any player can join your game at any time replacing the a.i of a chosen country?

thats good!

I suppose you would then become a 'host' yes?

 

[Alerias]

So that just means any player can join your game at any time replacing the a.i of a chosen country?

thats good!

I suppose you would then become a 'host' yes?

Im sure therell eventually be a dev diary on multiplayer to flesh this out. I dont have much MP experience with Paradox titles sadly.

 

[Poh]

Also theres either a new province between brandenburg and poland or a former brandenburg province turned into something else (probably teutonic) Dunno if thats new compared to EU3 though.

EDIT: oh i almost forgot. Merry christmas and a happy new year to you from paradox (well and ofc also all you other forumites )

 

[Alerias]

Also theres either a new province between brandenburg and poland or a former brandenburg province turned into something else (probably teutonic) Dunno if thats new compared to EU3 though.

EDIT: oh i almost forgot. Merry christmas and a happy new year to you from paradox (well and ofc also all you other forumites )

That's Neumark.

Wikipedia:

Brandenburg pawned the Neumark to the Teutonic Knights in 1402, and it passed completely under their control in 1429, although the Order neglected the region as well. After the Teutonic Knights' defeat in the Battle of Grunwald (Tannenberg) in 1410, the future Grand Master Michael Küchmeister von Sternberg used the Neumark as a staging ground for an army of German and Hungarian mercenaries which he later used against the forces of King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland. This allowed the Order to retain much of its territory in the First Peace of Thorn in 1411.[4]

In 1454/1455 the Knights' mismanagement led to their pawning of the Neumark back to Brandenburg, by then led by Elector Frederick II of the Hohenzollern dynasty (Treaties of Cölln and Mewe). After Frederick completed the re-acquisition of Neumark in 1463 for 40,000 guilders, the region belonged to Brandenburg for the following centuries, with the exception of the time between 1535-1571. Frederick II wrote for his successors "that the said land, the New Mark, shall belong to German territory and to the worshipful Electorate of the Mark of Brandenburg, with which it was incorporated at the institution of the Electorate, and shall so remain, and shall never pass to those who speak not the German tongue"

 

[grommile]

On other maps, I noticed Provence is already out of the HRE in 1444, whereas its still in at that date in Eu3.

Provence, Poznan, and Kalisz have been removed from the HRE in DW 5.2, since they weren't in any meaningful sense part of the empire in 1399, let alone 1444.

 

[Alerias]

Provence, Poznan, and Kalisz have been removed from the HRE in DW 5.2, since they weren't in any meaningful sense part of the empire in 1399, let alone 1444.

Heresy! Our sacred right to rule over Poznan and Arles will never falter!

Thanks for the info Hopefully there will be mechanics in place to allow the player to recover lost Imperial land, though IIRC, that's pretty hard to do for the player.

 

[Alerias]

Some extra info from the video, this time taken from the messagelog;

"Formalize Weights, Scales and Measures" decision is still in, with Gondwana doing it in 1618
Liquor Act, Trade Embargoes, Guarantees of Independence, Royal Marriages still in (obviously)
The log uses "trade nodes" instead of trade centers in text referencing embargoes being imposed or lifted.
Decision: Enact Settlement Policy still in. The "decision:" part makes it hard to guess whether this is actually still a separate decision option or simply the Monarch DIP cultural conversion power being used. The AI clearly is willing to use it because three countries do it in this.
Use of merchants is displayed thusly; "The merchant Almeric de Balzac from Auvergne arrived in Cote d'Argent".

 

[cyberalien18]

Congrats on the "good looks" of the game... it will be as perfect as CKII is for each related period.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year for all you on Paradox and all the Paradoxians here on the Forum


P.S. - Still waiting for the Development Diary on Portugal ;P

 

[Wallain]

I never grow tired of the EU music.

 

[Revshawn]

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

It helps that there are only a handful of players playing it in the first place. XD

 

[unmerged(80402)]

EDIT: In the above sentence, Remove "Johan" and Insert "The Chosen One"

Silly pagans.

Heresy! Our sacred right to rule over Poznan and Arles will never falter!

Thanks for the info Hopefully there will be mechanics in place to allow the player to recover lost Imperial land, though IIRC, that's pretty hard to do for the player.

Poland shall retake our fathersland in lubeck. Thats decided.

 

[Fawr]

Advisors costing more than army... interesting. If this is common situation it will really change the budget structure.

In EU3 you often spent 80-90% of your money on research. If you think of advisors as research spending it sounds like your % spent on it has really gone down (which is realistic).

 

[Simon B]

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

How about seeing actual roads graphic to display trade in the terrain map mode

 

[Simon B]

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

How about seeing actual roads graphic to display trade in the terrain map mode

Also... merry christmas!

 

[Alerias]

Advisors costing more than army... interesting. If this is common situation it will really change the budget structure.

Keep in mind, youre looking at peacetime numbers; repletion of casualties is where the biggest part of your military monies go now. So in wartime, the military costs alot more than the civil service, but in peacetime it doesn't. Seems realistic to me.

 

[unmerged(1823)]

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.

My second ideagroup i took was trade. Had a hard time deciding between it and the economical ones.

 

[Jia Xu]

My second ideagroup i took was trade. Had a hard time deciding between it and the economical ones.

When you come back from the break, you should consider using idea sets as bonus material for future diaries! I'd love to know what ideas are in which sets and what all of the ideas do.

 

[Velastor]

At 31 seconds in the video I noticed something interesting.

12 February,1509 - Decision: Enact Settlement Policy in Ruthenia (Poland)

At 30 seconds you can see it again with the Ming.



Does this mean that Settlement Policies will still be the main method of changing culture besides the random number generator?

 

[unmerged(63836)]

Does this mean that Settlement Policies will still be the main method of changing culture besides the random number generator?

IIRC devs stated somewhere that province culture-change would be purchased with Monarch Points. Hopefully it would pretty damn expensive, for sake of realism.

 

[unmerged(1823)]

At 31 seconds in the video I noticed something interesting.

12 February,1509 - Decision: Enact Settlement Policy in Ruthenia (Poland)

At 30 seconds you can see it again with the Ming.



Does this mean that Settlement Policies will still be the main method of changing culture besides the random number generator?

No. That decision was removed a while ago.