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EU4 - Development Diary - 4th of December 2018

Good day all and welcome to another EUIV Dev diary. We're wrapping up with Golden Century ready for it's launch next week, so there's not much meat to today's diary, but we are going to reveal the 10 new achievements, which will bring the total number to a staggering 295. I've heard that anyone who completes all of them gets their wishes granted, but I cannot comment to its authenticity.


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Trophy Hunter - Capture an enemy flagship

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You get a new home, and you get a new home - Expel 5 different minorities to your colonies

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Why is the Rûm gone!? - As Asturias, establish an Order in Rum

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The League of Mayapan - Starting as Huastec, form Maya

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Yarr Harr a Pirate’s life for me - Choose to play as New Providence and conquer all of Caribbeans.

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Forever Golden - Complete the Spanish Mission Tree

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Spanish Fly - Starting as Offaly, secure a Personal Union over an Iberian nation.

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Where Am I? - As a New World native with Random New World active, explore the entire New World.

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Basque in Glory - Starting as Navarra, ensure that most of Iberia is Basque culture before the Age of Absolutism

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An Unlikely Candidate - Starting as Mzab, Touggourt or Djerid, reform Al-Andalus


These Achievements will be available for hunters from Golden Century's release on 11th December. While some shouldn't cause sleepless nights for most players, best of luck to those who try their hand at Basque in Glory. Navarra's start is full of danger, but also massive opportunity.


Now, stepping aside from today's topic of Achievements, I'd like to take a moment to address some of the feedback we've been getting during the dev diaries for Golden Century. There have been plenty of concerns raised, indeed very fair ones, regarding Golden Century and the 1.28 Spain Update not matching up with expectations, not having community input taken into account and development generally not being in line with what the community is wanting. There are many other points that have been raised, but I want to draw light to these.

These are very fair points to bring up, and one comment in particular resonated with me, and that is that our plans and what we are developing are often shared so late in development with the community that feedback and suggestions they want to give can't or won't be able to be integrated. This has lead to a lot of people voicing suggestions for features or changes and getting very understandably frustrated when what is delivered does not take it into account.

So after Golden Century launches, we're going to talk a lot more about future plans and what we have in store for EU4 in 2019, sharing our vision of what we want to do with the game and what we want to bring to you, the player. I'll be talking about this at length in the Development Diary following Golden Century, so on the 18th December. Fittingly, it will be the last Dev Diary of 2018, before we take off for Christmas Break. Our ambition is to get our community a lot more linked in with what we are planning, and can give their feedback and suggestions accordingly and within plenty of time to implement. We have also been asked for how exactly we use suggestions from the forums and how to write a good suggestion thread, which is a great idea, and will be part of said 18th Dec Dev diary.

So while the feedback especially last week makes for some humbling reading for us, it's still important, and this is one of the things we're doing about it. There are far more plans in the pipeline, but, well, for that tune in on the 18th.

As for next week, we'll be having an early DD on the 10th, with Patchnotes. See you then!
 
Oh thats it? Its good to hear that concerns will be readdressed, but I don't think I will purchase this DLC in its current form. Its a shame it won't be until another two weeks that things will get looked over too. It really doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to placate the concerned fans.

I'm also a bit saddened by no achievements for Portugal :( In fact there's as many achievements for the Pirate Republics, which were never the publicized focus for this DLC, than for most countries in Spain in this game. It paints a really concerning picture.

Really, really crossing my fingers that you'll take a serious look at the "EU4 Suggestions" box. Not just in achievements, but there were amazing suggestions for map corrections, mission trees, idea revamps, .... I think people have been waiting a really long time for an Iberia Immersion Pack and they are really let down. The existence of amazing fan-made mods like MEIOU and Voltaire's Nightmare also make it seem hard to believe it's so difficult to tweak most things the fans have pointed out.

So yeah... I don't think I will buy this DLC. There's really not much in it for me, at least until all the feedback gets addressed like the last paragraphs imply.

I'm going to tick the "Respectfully Disagree" box, but only because I want Paradox to know they can do so much better. I'm not hoping the same happens as it did last week, with the amazingly high disapproval rate, but I have to vote my consciousness in this Development Diary. Europa Universalis 4 is an amazing game and this Immersion Content could have very easily been ten times better.

I wish the best for EU4, and will keep following developments on it :)

Just to clarify to anyone who may feel like they don't understand my choice in the vote:

Like many, I was looking forward very much to this DLC, especially since it was announced to be about the region I am originally from and the other Immersion Packs, Brittania Rule, Dharma and Third Rome, went so far in-depth in terms of reworking their respective regions.

So I have to say I completely sympathize with many upset players in this forum, especially since Iberia contains not just one, but two Tier 1 nations and Portugal in particular, asides from a very very helpful unique Naval Doctrine which I absolutely appreciated :), seems to have been forgotten and even hurt along the way in the overall balance of the game compared to many other areas that were worked on.

Not to derail, but it started with the map, which missed a lot of amazing opportunities and even spawned the quite fantastic "A few suggestions for Iberia" thread by @navaluiki and @Thrudgelmir2333, who along with some of the fans made a quite amazing and very clear proposal for what would be a map I think everyone would be satisfied with. It got acknowledged by @RodDel , even, so you know the fans are capable of not only some amazing feedback, but also planning it out with game balance concerns and present it to the developing team in a very clear way. :) I was especially proud of this and how the developers were humble enough to acknowledge it.

But unfortunately this has been the extent of the acknowledgement of what was wrong. While there were other important mechanics introduced (Holy Orders, Flagships and Expulsion of Minorities) they seemed either A) also riddled with mechanical and historical issues which have been more than well documented by concerned fans so far or B) Far from being the main feature of what you would expect from an Iberia Immersion Pack. I don't want to put salt on the wound of the theory many have shared with me that this DLC is a Pirate Immersion Pack, but the way the main features seem to favor this mechanic in stead of Spain itself makes it difficult to think otherwise.

Now into this particular Development Diary, I was hoping that after the shocking feedback of the last one we'd be getting some sort of extra olive branch or assurance all of this would be addressed, or at least a especially rich bag of achievements that would show the Developers have been listening after all.

No one here wants an underwhelming DLC to be released and would not mind waiting a few extra months for Golden Century's problems to be addressed, and we cannot be expected to hope that a corrective patch will be announced at some arbitrary point in the future, especially when, from what I'm told by people since I returned to the forums, there's some issues with the Poland patch and Dharma that haven't been retouched as of this day.

And with amazing mods like MEIOU currently available for free.... well, I'm just sorry, Paradox, but no, it would be punishing the feedback of great, passionate contributors like these to vote 'Agree' on this.

So this Respectfully Disagree goes out because I love this game, I love Paradox and I hope an amazing Iberia Immersion Pack gets made. :) But most of all cause I love this community and I think they shouldn't be punished for being concerned.
 
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Good to see you will make an extra effort to involve the community more! Can't wait to see what will the next DD contain. Til then, guess it's time to wrap up the Østindisk Kompagni run :)
 
So after Golden Century launches, we're going to talk a lot more about future plans and what we have in store for EU4 in 2019
That is really good to hear!
I'm really looking forward to that DD!
 
The massive amount of interacting and non-interacting modifiers is just insane. I hope it gets cleaned up ina polishing patch. NO MORE BUTTONS. Cohesion.
 
*Dev Diary*

@DDRJake,
Pirates should be a game-rule option.

Flagships should be a game-rule option.

The massive amount of interacting and non-interacting modifiers is just insane. I hope it gets cleaned up ina polishing patch. NO MORE BUTTONS. Cohesion.

Exactly. Everything needs to interact.
 
Good to see you will make an extra effort to involve the community more

Given the late circumstances, I would drop the “extra” and the “more” from your sentence...
 
View attachment 423865
Where Am I? - As a New World native with Random New World active, explore the entire New World.

Oh awesome, I recognise this achievement ;) At least we know that someone on the team reads the Achievement Suggestion thread :D

I'm excited to try this out and see how the RNW native life is. RNW is such an interesting feature, it would be awesome to get more tiles added to it (or made the addition of tiles through mods not affect the checksum...)!

I also like the general idea behind the Basque in Glory achievement, though it looks like it may be very difficult!