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EUIV - Development Diary - 12th of May 2020

Good afternoon! I’m back again with another content-driven dev diary. Today we’ll be taking a look at two of the new mission trees coming with the Emperor expansion: Germany and Lübeck.

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The German mission tree takes a lot of inspiration, as you might expect, from Imperial Germany and the accomplishments of Bismarck. Although very much outside of the period, we felt that it was an appropriate way to go given the ahistorical nature of a united Germany within our timeframe.

The conquest branch of the mission tree begins with Blood and Iron, which requires you to own at least 50 provinces across the North Germany or South Germany regions, essentially completing your early German unification. This mission rewards perhaps the most extensive set of permanent claims of any single mission in the game: the Low Countries, Italy, France, and Poland will all simultaneously become your next targets. This is pretty extreme for a single mission, but given the requirements not only of the mission but also of forming Germany in the first place, the player is likely already in a very dominant position by the time that they unlock this mission tree. Completing the Annex Poland mission gives even further permanent claims, this time on the Baltic, Scandinavia, and Carpathia regions.

Next we have an economic branch of the mission tree. You are charged with building manufactories to Industrialize the Rhineland, permanently improving local goods produced in applicable provinces by 15%. You must also Promote Urbanization by reaching at least 30 development in 10 German provinces, and achieve Protected Markets by reaching 75% trade share in all German trade nodes. Completing these missions unlocks the Dominant Economy mission, which requires you to have the highest income of any European nation as well as 10,000 ducats with no loans.

Next up, Germany has a branch of its mission tree dedicated to overseas expansion, beginning of course with the construction of an Imperial Navy. After building 30 heavy ships, you must Burn the Wooden Wall by ensuring that no British country has more than 5 heavy ships. Achieving this will grant you +10% naval morale for the rest of the game, as well as a permanent claim on London. Scramble for Africa and Overseas Empire see you building an empire in Africa and Asia respectively.

Germany and the Holy Roman Empire share a large portion of their missions trees, but each of them have a unique branch available only to them. The German unique branch focuses on state-building, for instance hiring skilled advisors, gaining Crown Land, constructing universities, and gaining absolutism.

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This is the Holy Roman Empire’s unique branch of the mission tree. It has been said that the HRE was neither Holy, Roman, nor an empire, but you have the chance to change that. You must become Defender of the Faith (giving you an opportunity to launch a final crusade for Jerusalem), become Papal Controller (if Catholic), and finally centralize the disparate states of Germany into a single nation. Completing the Roman Resolution mission as a Catholic nation fires the following event, representing victory of the Emperor in the dispute between Church and Emperor:

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Hi I’m @Alfray Stryke , a new addition on the EUIV team. Currently working as QA, although I have assisted with the design and implementation of Lübeck’s mission tree in the Emperor DLC.

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The four paths for their missions are:
  • End the Sound Toll, By forcing or convincing Denmark to end the toll and increasing your trade in the Lübeck trade node, you continue to increase your trade in the Baltic. This leads to gaining claims on the Jutland peninsula and then Norway (subjugation if Norway is independent, permanent claims if they are not).
  • Ties with England requires either strengthening relations with England or Lübeckian merchants or privateers having at least 25% of the trade power in the English Channel. Completing this will strengthen Lübeckian traders in the British Isles, granting claims in order to form trading cities in London, Edinburgh and Ayr. Setting up trade cities in Edinburgh and Ayr will lead to dominating the North Sea trade and recruiting an explorer to settle Newfoundland (giving a Center of Trade there) and founding the American colony of Neulübeck.
    • The London Steelyard was historically the main trading base of the Hanseatic League during the 15th and 16th centuries, thus either owning London directly or indirectly via a member of your trade league will grant you a substantial boost to trade.
  • Defend the City, although Lübeck starts as a relatively wealthy but militarily lacking nation, their first goal should be to ensure they have a standing army capable of holding their own against any neighbours inside the HRE. Complete this via your own soldier or recruiting mercenary companies and you will gain claims on the rest of the Mecklenburg area. After building up your own strength, it is time to return the cities of Visby and Novgorod to the Hanseatic League by either owning them directly or indirectly.
  • The Merchant Navy, by building up your merchant navy and increasing your coffers, you are then led to formalising bookkeeping and building the Lübeck Krantor (replacing the old decision). After increasing your ship building industry, commissioning the Adler von Lübeck (for owners of Golden Century, the decision now requires a flagship), and asserting naval dominance over the North and Baltic Seas Lübeck can be declared the Queen of the Hanseatic League. This rewards you with increased diplomatic reputation and decreased advisor cost.


The culmination of their mission tree after increasing the reach of the Hanseatic League is to unite the league into a solidified political entity - making any members of the trade league that own historically important trade cities into vassals, with a boost to their diplomatic relations in order to compensate for this. Then using the same system for the Kingdom of God and the Caliphate renaming you are rightfully termed the Hanseatic League!

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And that’s all for today! Join us next week for the last in our series of content-focused dev diaries.
 
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The more I see the new mission trees, the more I am fond of the old missions. Non-linear, always some to choose from, and most of all, without all those crazy permanent claims dished out so easily. Getting a claim legitimate enough to prevent the stability loss should be a thing hard to come by. Maybe even the claims should have strength, so the really strong ones and by definition difficult to come by, would e.g. make the defender's allies less likely to join, while weaker ones would still enable war, but give You some more AE.
Maybe AI should be taught to understand what's needed for a mission and act accordingly rather than just: bang, You control Germany, so it follows You have legitimate claim on all countries around You. How is that considered anyhow reasonable? "Finally I have become a King of Germany, by extension all of Europe recognises my rights to half of Poland, all of Pruthenia, and a half of France for good measure. Oh, these are not anyhow expirable. They shall remain in force for all eternity" How? How did that work in the content designer's mind? How is that supposed to work in our games?

I can't express how much I like this post.
 
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The conquest branch of the mission tree begins with Blood and Iron, which requires you to own at least 50 provinces across the North Germany or South Germany regions, essentially completing your early German unification. This mission rewards perhaps the most extensive set of permanent claims of any single mission in the game: the Low Countries, Italy, France, and Poland will all simultaneously become your next targets. This is pretty extreme for a single mission, but given the requirements not only of the mission but also of forming Germany in the first place, the player is likely already in a very dominant position by the time that they unlock this mission tree. Completing the Annex Poland mission gives even further permanent claims, this time on the Baltic, Scandinavia, and Carpathia regions.

Will Germany still require tech 20 to form? Nationalism and Imperialism are unlocked at 23 which would make these claims almost entirely pointless.
 
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The more I see the new mission trees, the more I am fond of the old missions. Non-linear, always some to choose from, and most of all, without all those crazy permanent claims dished out so easily. Getting a claim legitimate enough to prevent the stability loss should be a thing hard to come by. Maybe even the claims should have strength, so the really strong ones and by definition difficult to come by, would e.g. make the defender's allies less likely to join, while weaker ones would still enable war, but give You some more AE.
Maybe AI should be taught to understand what's needed for a mission and act accordingly rather than just: bang, You control Germany, so it follows You have legitimate claim on all countries around You. How is that considered anyhow reasonable? "Finally I have become a King of Germany, by extension all of Europe recognises my rights to half of Poland, all of Pruthenia, and a half of France for good measure. Oh, these are not anyhow expirable. They shall remain in force for all eternity" How? How did that work in the content designer's mind? How is that supposed to work in our games?
Agreed, I'm really not a fan of how easy it is to get claims now and how the game is focusing more on expansion and empire building. Massive conquests make sense in colonial regions like the americas, but not so much in Europe proper.
 
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Agreed, I'm really not a fan of how easy it is to get claims now and how the game is focusing more on expansion and empire building. Massive conquests make sense in colonial regions like the americas, but not so much in Europe proper.

I was sort of hoping they learned their lesson from Imperator, where they concluded people just wanted map painting and... well. The sales speak for themselves.
 
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Thank the Gods for the Missions Expanded mod.
 
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I love this new German mission tree, it gives me strong Victoria II vibe, which is better than nothing while we are quietly waiting for the third installment.
 
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I'd like to point out that giving Germany permanent claims on France, Poland, the low countries, and Italy corresponds in no way whatsoever with anything in 19th century Germany. It's a cartoon caricature of history that sounds more like WWII-era Germany.

Bismarck didn't unite Germany by going around attacking or claiming everything in sight. He succeeded because he was a keen enough strategist to maintain limited, realistic goals. He also knew when military force should stop and diplomacy should start. Securing Germany's place in Europe meant convincing the neighbors that there were no further plans to expand. Bismarck's genius was doing this and maintaining a bloc of alliances favorable enough to prevent any country from attacking Germany. Going around pushing claims to France, Italy, etc. would have brought the entire continent into a massive anti-German coalition. That would have been very bad news for Germany.

In other words, Bismarck always kept a close eye on his AE, and made sure never to approach the limit.

I would prefer a set of missions that are more nuanced than just "conquer this, conquer that". Missions following a Bismarck model should be more diplomatic in focus. Better yet would be a set of missions drawing on the rich thousand years of history Germany had prior to the 19th century. But if we're going to go the power-gaming route and just grant Germany perm claims everywhere, let's not pretend that we're following Bismarck as a role model.
 
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Does the formation of Germany still break you out of the HRE?

Wouldn't it be better to have Germany formable as a kingdom within the HRE? After all, that is where the historical kingdom of Germany existed since the Middle Ages, long before the 19th century and Bismarck.
Except that in EU4 individual nations are unitary states, with autonomous vassals, like the various members of the HRE, being effectively independent. Unifying them into one actual country, rather a sprawling kingdom made up of a patchwork of vassals, is the complete antithesis of the HRE.
 
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Except that in EU4 individual nations are unitary states, with autonomous vassals, like the various members of the HRE, being effectively independent. Unifying them into one actual country, rather a sprawling kingdom made up of a patchwork of vassals, is the complete antithesis of the HRE.

According to your reasoning, part of the HRE mission tree is the complete antithesis of the HRE...
 
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Does the renamimg effect work only on countries?
 
Hm, not entirely fond of the Kaiserreich slant for Germany, given that of the two options for uniting Germany (HRE or Germany), it is the only one available to republics and, therefore, a likely lategame goal for a German-culture republic.
 
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In my honest opionion, using Bismarck's German Empire and its militarism as prototype of Germany and HRE's mission tree in EU4 is very boring, unsuitable and most importantly, lack of imagination.

Germany and HRE's mission tree in EU4 could focus more on how would Germany unified and what would Germany be during the period of EU4. It could be use to imagine how would Germany be unified in a way different to late 19th century (real) history. It could includes elements such as Landsknechts, the (HRE) Reichsarmee, the Lützow Free Corps, the Rheinbund, the proposal of Greater Germany, the nation of poetry and philosophy (the nation of Goethe, Schiller and Kant rather than Bismarck and Moltke), the nationalism and liberalism movement in late 18 - early 19th century, etc.

I don't mind the "Bismarck" or "Prussian" theme Germany be a part/a branch of the mission tree, but it shouldn't be the whole of the mission tree.

@Groogy @neondt @Meka66 @Johan
I fully support this. At least i hope that there will be a lot of different events for all of the HRE Members regarding the culture/philosophy/art of this time. The start of the press or the big religion conflicts inside the HRE are just not feeling good represented. even with the existing mechanics. And "just" 13 incidents don't really feel like that much...

I still don't understand why I should play as any of the "new" tags when its just another flag/name/color or NI-Set, while it got almost no new flavor in form of events or missions - I hope, that the "missions from estates" that kinda remembers of the old mission system will get us some much needed flavor, but its to early/less informations to say smth about that.

I would at least hoped, that the opms that are in the north of the HRE would have a shared missiontree/eventchains regarding the pressure of netherlands/Burgundy/denmark/GB, the hanseatic l. or the emperor.
I don't understand how hamburg will not get unique missions. -

There should be a rule to just add a new tag to the map, if it gets a mission and eventset to have some reason to play with this nation (beside a meme achievement maybe) otherwise it feels like imperator map painting. But that are problems everyone was talking about the last 2 years with the decline of "good" EU IV DLCs and we would thought we would be over that by now.... after your DD about bringing back the flavor and not repeating imperator mistakes... Can't understand how hard it could be to achieve that in over a year of development....
 
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Will Germany still require tech 20 to form? Nationalism and Imperialism are unlocked at 23 which would make these claims almost entirely pointless.

Except permanent claims reduce coring cost by 25% (ok, due to the whole territorial core removing the claim, it’s only a net 12.5% if you also promote to state).

Italy gets 25% CCR, Rome gets 20% CCR. Germany gets a lot of permanent claims: strictly worse but not completely pointless.
 
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these Germany/HRE missions are blatantly overpowered , but who'll gonna stop you, a unified germany?
 
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Very much dislike this update. Nothing "immersing" is added, Hansa is turned into a society of warrior-merchants, and the German Empire brought forward a few centuries without *understanding* that while the German Empire was Prussian-dominated in its external look, it was a very federal society internally (though, still, Prussian-dominated).

Also, before the dissolution of the HRE, no other "European" ruler would have really considered "Emperor-ship" (well, Peter of Russia is a special case, taking on the Eastern Roman throne) because that claim would have implied immediate conflict with Austria. This should, if we are going down this pathway, be represented.

The Hansa, meanwhile, should not need to conquer territory. It should have goals where it diplomatically binds one-state provinces into itself, makes it into an actual *league*, and then expands in this way (diplomatically & by trade). The Hansa army does not reflect history either. It could have missions where becoming trade leader in naval supplies in some trade nodes gives high autonomy negatives and unrest to the ruler of X in province Y, making that province want to join the league instead. Yes, Visby should be in the league and is perhaps the only case where actual conquest might apply but even then we should have better missions to do it ("German traders sent to Visby convince the locals to fight for us" vs "Our glorious undefeatable army wins over everyone").

Lastly, why no love for the Teutonic & Livonian Orders?
 
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I don't like the Hansa being turned into a warrior nation and Germany getting permanent claims all over Europe. Please try creating some missions that aren't just about conquering everything.
 
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