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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 3rd of May 2022

Greetings everyone!

Today I want to present to you the upcoming content for our Northern Europe Focused DLC. Yes, you heard it right, the next Immersion Pack is about the Baltic and Scandinavian countries!
Sorry to everyone who was wishing for an Atlantis DLC :p

But before I get started with it, I want to share with you what we learned from the Origins DLC and the free content alongside it, so you can get a general idea of what the design of this DLC and Patch 1.34 will be like:
  • Branching missions are quite a success, and players are appreciating the flexibility of this new design. Because of that, you can expect that we continue with this philosophy for the Baltics.
  • Gaining Development from buildings was an interesting experiment. Although it was not as overpowered as many players have claimed, its snowball effect is definitely not something we will continue with.
  • Special units are one hell of a problem child to balance around. The Cawa units have shown that they have their niche, but they never really made it to become something of a backbone of your forces. While this is not necessarily tragic in Ethiopia’s case as the Cawa fulfill their role, it shows that we should dare to be more experimental with it.
  • The Mali experience is probably the most polarizing one in EU4 - you either love the punches given to you by the game, or you absolutely despise the rebel spam. In all honesty, we do enjoy having tags in the game which are more painful to navigate with. With that being said, in the Baltic DLC we want to have a similar on-the-edge experience for one of our nations, but not in the form of rebel spams. How this can be achieved - and if it will be achieved in the first place - is still an open question though.
  • The estate privileges and the new formables which came with the free content patch have been received very positively too - especially the Religious Diplomats. So we want to continue this trend of adding region specific content to the DLC, while more common additions - like estate privileges or government reforms - will be part of the free patch.

Speaking of the free patch: I know that there are people who do not care too much about the content of the Immersion Pack. Because of that, the end of every “Mission Tree Dev Diary” will also have a section addressing free content or balance changes concerning countries outside of the DLC’s scopes for Patch 1.34.

With that being said, let’s get started with the content reveal! But first, as usual, take into account that this content is currently under development and unpolished, so there will be placeholder art, typos, tweaked numbers, etc. before the release version.

“Where some states have an army, the Prussian Army has a state.” - Mirabeau

“Prussia was hatched from a cannon-ball.” - Napoleon Bonaparte

“I promise the chastity of my body, and poverty, and obedience to God, Holy Mary, and you, to the Master of the Teutonic Order, and your successors, according to the rules and practices of the Order, obedience unto death.” - Oath sworn upon admission into the Teutonic Order

As you can guess, the first dev diary is about our favorite space marine nation, the Teutonic Order, and to some extent, Prussia.

Requested by Duke Conrad of Mazovia in 1225, the Teutonic Order conquered the land of the Old Prussians, converting them to Christianity while the Prussian lands got Germanized over the two centuries. As the Teutonic Order was eventually conquered and vassalized by the Poles, secularized into Prussia and inherited by the Hohenzollern, the mission tree of the Order is less about recreating history and more about the “what if”.

And the many question marks of their mission tree show it:
Teutonic Mission Tree.png
The Teutonic Mission Tree has only 6 missions you can do from the get-go, which handle the very basics of the Order’s needs: gain protection from Poland, ally (and vassalize) the Livonian Order, build to force limit and of course handle the Prussian Confederation - which has become its own little disaster:
Prussian Confederation.png
Note: the way it works is still the same as it is right now in EU4. Just the first event which gives your burghers a ton of land has been moved from a random event into one triggered by the disaster. Without the DLC you will have a decision to end the disaster, while with it the mission “Handle the Confederation” will finish it.

The mission “Seek Imperial Protection” is about joining the HRE. As you are surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, it is only natural that you want to find a way to protect yourself from these two.
Join HRE event.png
The Emperor will of course receive the corresponding event to it too.
Join HRE event Emperor.png
Note: The Emperor will receive this event if you join the HRE through the HRE menu instead of the event - and they can kick you out if you are on the Emperor’s bad side.

The Emperor will most likely choose to accept the Order in the Empire - but under the heavy restrictions that internal wars within the Empire are forbidden. Of course you can choose to reject this…
Joined the HRE.png
A lot of guides will probably have to be rewritten now as the HRE is no longer a viable expansion path in the early game.

The mission “Defeat Poland”, which can be finished by either conquering 4 provinces of Poland or by defeating 3 Polish armies in battle, will unlock the rest of your mission tree.
Prussian Path.png

Crusader Path.png
You have the choice of two rather big paths for your country. You either can choose the Prussian path, which is the more historical (as historical as it can get with a Teutonic Order repulsing their doom) choice, and the Crusader path, which will let your order become more zealous in the Catholic faith than ever before, but the idea of a “Prussia” or “Reformation” becomes alien to you.

Let us start with the Prussian one. Taking this path will change your mission tree substantially:
Prussian Path mission tree.png
The Prussian path is mostly focusing on, well, becoming Prussia, and its role within the HRE, an improved military, Enlightenment and eventually crushing the Revolution. So if you take this path then expect to have a more long term campaign as your missions will mirror the ones of Brandenburg’s Prussia.

You might notice that there are still Branching Missions left even after taking one path. These missions are your “Path of Expansion” basically, as your Teutonic Prussia does not need to have goals of expansion like its historical counterpart had.

Completing the mission “The Order and the Empire” will grant you yet another choice of what path you want to follow:
HRE Diplo Path.png

HRE Conquest Path.png

Prussian Kingdom Path.png
If you take either of the two HRE paths (Holy Roman Diplomacy and German Conquest) and the Emperor forbid you to declare wars on HRE members until you become Prussia, you will get the following event:
Bishopric of Prussia.png
You will form a Catholic Prussia within the borders of the HRE, becoming a Teutonic Bishopric, a new government reform for a Catholic Theocratic Prussia.

Now let us go through the three different paths swiftly:

The German Conquest path has missions which are all about the pure conquest of Germany.
HRE Conquest Path missions.png
To be frank, there is not much to tell you about these missions as they are your classical “seek and conquer” missions in the HRE you are all familiar with. “An Empire of Iron and Blood” is, you guessed it, the final mission which basically asks you to conquer Germany. It is basically a glorified “Form German Nation” decision, but you get a nice +25% Governing Capacity modifier in your capital if you have one of the Prussian government reforms as your government type, at top of forming Germany (you receive this triggered province modifier as your final reward in all three of these paths).

The Holy Roman Diplomacy path is a little bit of a different story though:
HRE Diplo Path missions.png
Unlike the conquest missions, in the Diplomatic missions your goal is to actually become the Holy Roman Emperor yourself and unite Germany not through iron and blood, but through letters and words. In order to achieve this you will need to be elevated to a higher position than just the one of a simple bishopric. Fortunately, the mission “Subjugate Brandenburg” will help you with that. By vassalizing Brandenburg, you get the mission reward which enables a casus belli against the Emperor as well as three decisions, which you can use to transfer the electorship from your subject to yourself.
Gain Electorship decisions.png

Gain Electorship war.png
Purchasing the Electorship will require you to offer 6000 Ducats to the Emperor - while having no deficit nor loan. Requesting the Electorship will require you to be best friends with the Emperor, which means 190 opinions and 80 trust with the Emperor. The Emperor will also gain a substantial amount of favors with you, so keep this in mind. Gaining the Electorship through war is also an option as you can see in the image above. Finally, what is missing out is a decision which you can see when you become emperor and you have an elector as your subject, which allows you to usurp the Electorship, transferring it from your subject to yourself.

The mission “Become an Elector” will instantly elevate you to the rank of a kingdom - an Archbishopric of Prussia so to say.

Of course being an elector alone won’t make you an emperor though, so eventually you have to secularize your country. If you reach level 4 of the government reforms, have 2 stability, reach tech 10 and Protestantism has spawned, you are able to complete the mission “Secularize Prussia”, giving the following event:
Form Prussian Monarchy.png
Additionally, the mission will also disable all rebels spawned from seizing land from the Clergy.

The final missions of this batch revolve around the Religious League War, becoming the Emperor of the HRE, and eventually revoking the privilege of the HRE.

But what if you don’t want to deal with the HRE whatsoever? What if you always wondered “what would have happened if Prussia was neither inherited by the Hohenzollern or remained a subject of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?”

For that we have the final path, which is the one of the Prussian Kingdom:
Prussian Kingdom Path missions.png
These missions will set you on a conquest spree against Poland and Lithuania over and over. While they seem like another bunch of familiar conquest missions, they do have their highlights though. The mission “Push into Ruthenia” unlocks two unique estate privileges which stand in direct opposition to each other:
Orthodox Ruthenia event.png
The “Issue the Anti-Heresy Act” is a simple Clergy privilege which increases your missionary strength against heretics by 2%, while decreasing the Burghers Loyalty Equilibrium by 10%.
The Burghers’ privilege “Grant Orthodox Autonomy” on the other hand is a little bit more intriguing.
New Burghers estate privilege.png
Coptic has been added here because Orthodox and Coptic faiths have this “Tolerated Heresy” relationship with other Christian denominations. In the context of the mission it might not make much sense, but from a gameplay perspective I think the privilege should behave the same for both.

The other highlight of this path is the “Fortify the Borders” and “Fortify Dnieper” missions which give a modifier to up to a limited number of fort buildings in the highlighted provinces, which makes the maintenance of a fort virtually non-existent.
cheap forts.png
Your missions will give you claims in all of Poland, Moldavia and Ruthenia. In other words, you become the Prussian equivalent of the PLC.

But enough of Prussia for today. Let us talk about a more Catholicism orientated Teutonic Order playthrough:
Crusader mission path.png
With the Crusader Path you return to your original purpose, which is Christianizing the pagans and heathens, but also to crush any kind of heresy you encounter. If you want to paint the political map with your name and the religious name in yellow, this path is perfect for you!

The most left-part of your mission tree will focus on expanding into Russia, ending the Third Rome and healing the Schism between Catholic and Orthodox faiths, though as you are not the Papal Authority but just an Order of crusading knights, your version of the “Healed the Schism” might be not as convincing.

The second and third columns are all about mad conquest into the east, pushing into Hordes territory and converting the steppes. The highlight here is the mission “The Ruthenian Plains”, which unlocks a new government reform for you!
crusader order.png
Your ruler gains a new, fancy title too!

While your Holy Order is conquering eastwards and facing more and more hordes, your fourth column of missions evolves and adapts your military to the environment of the steppes. Each military mission is about either reforming your military by achieving certain amounts of Army Professionalism (or Army Tradition), by winning battles, and later on by recruiting more cavalry units.

The military missions give a permanent modifier which makes your army more and more proficient at using cavalry. The next military mission will then replace the previous perma-modifier with a stronger one until you complete the mission “Establish a Great Cavalry” which gives the final version of this modifier:
mounted crusaders.png
In easier terms: the more you are fighting the hordes of Central Asia and the more you crusade the steppes, the more your army becomes reliant on horses. And these military missions are basically “leveling your cavalry up”.

Eventually, with the mission “Crusaders of the Steppes” your Order will reflect the changes they did undergo through:
Steppesdust Crusaders.png

Holy Horde.png
On a final note: razing works a little bit differently for a “Theocratic Horde” such as your Teutonic Holy Horde. You can only raze heathen and heretic provinces, and you gain 1 Devotion for each 3 development razed. Additionally, because you get this reform rather late, the decrease of the Monarch Power starts at base tech 12 instead of 3.

That was all for the Teutonic Mission Tree!

Finally a quick word for something we want to address in the Free Patch of 1.34: with the buffs of Catholicism, the religions of Protestantism, Reformed and Anglicanism have fallen off a bit in their attractiveness.

Because of that we have decided to not necessarily buff these religions, but to add more appealing options to them instead:
Anglican buffs.png
First thing: Anglicanism Aspects have been reworked. The Mercantilism and Cash actions have been combined into one. Then, Divorcing your Consort will now grant 12 ADM/DIP/MIL power per missing stat (so this means the worse your consort the more monarch power you get from divorcing, so a 6/6/6 gives 0 monarch power while a 0/0/0 would give 72 in each category). Marrying a Local Noblewoman will increase your chance of a new Heir by 100% for 15 years (you can imagine how this works). The Stability action now grants some Legitimacy (or its equivalent).

The new aspects are ‘Encourage Innovativeness’, which increases said Innovativeness Gain by 50% and Reform Progress by 15% for 15 years (hover of the aspect to read its tooltip, there you can find the values given). Then ‘Deport Heretics’ is kinda self explanatory. It also increases Settler Chance by 10% and Religious Unity by 10% for 15 years. ‘Reformation Diplomacy’ is a little bit of a “Religious Diplomats, but for the Reformation”, and ‘Militarize Religious Icons’ gives some army quality. However, ‘Militarize Religious Icons’ costs 200 Church Power instead of 100 like the rest.

That was it for today! Changes to Protestantism and Reformed confessions will be addressed with the next Dev Diary, as well as the content for the Livonian Order.

Until then I wish you all a nice week!
 
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Oh, that's actually great point, I never knew the prerequisites to have cossacks estate. I thought you just had to be somewhere in a general vicinity of cossacks territory to get them. However, doesn't my plan still work? "the only way to get it is to be a non-muslim horde with a eastern tech culture as primary and then flipping out of horde" - I am catholic teutonic horde, I get polish culture as primary (they are eastern, as far as I remember), THEN I become monarchy, and according to your message, I should become eastern tech group monarchy and be able to form Poland and get access to cossacks, should I not?
Edit: okay, just tested it and it worked. I can be whatever culture group I want as TO, as long as I change my goverment from horde to monarchy, while having polish as primary culture, I get eastern tech group.
it depends on religion - Christian religion gives eastern tech group, Muslim gives Muslim tech, Dharmic gives Indian, Buddhist or Confucian gives Chinese


@Republic of Mercury you can always go horde forming Tibet but you need to change religion twice
 
it depends on religion - Christian religion gives eastern tech group, Muslim gives Muslim tech, Dharmic gives Indian, Buddhist or Confucian gives Chinese


@Republic of Mercury you can always go horde forming Tibet but you need to change religion twice
Would culture-swapping to form the Mongol Empire also be an option? I don't think it's religion-locked.
 
Would culture-swapping to form the Mongol Empire also be an option? I don't think it's religion-locked.
You can go for Mongol Empire, it would be TO -> Pomerania -> Poland -> Yuan -> Mongol Empire and reforming into a monarchy but after forming Mongol Empire what to do with such strong cavalry? TO -> Pomerania -> Poland -> Tibet -> Prussia seems to be easier even with changing religions and you get Prussian monarchy at the end for the extra 10 discipline. Mongol Empire has a special government but only as a horde and standard monarchy
 
Thank you ...
Wow, that was a monster post! I have a couple of comments:

Re. stealing an electorship from your subject, it would make most sense to me if it's tied to annexing the subject. After all, you don't have the legal power to separate the privilege from your subject's title; the only way it makes sense is to bind your subject's primary title into your own, i.e. annex them.

Re. the event text recommendation by Thucydides7, while I like what he wrote, there is actually a mistake in the last sentence: "From this day" should instead read "From this day forth", or just "Henceforth". The way he wrote it would mean 'caused by or emerging from this day', rather than 'for a period of time starting on this day'. I normally don't comment on event text, but since Thucydides7 was kind enough to I thought I'd make sure it was perfect!
 
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Well, taking the Crusader path will kick you out of the HRE as you are now in a position where you are no longer in need for the protection of the HRE.
But this could maybe turned into an event instead where you get asked to leave (and gain a diplomatic benefit from it) or enjoy Imperial Protection at the cost of being obligated to the HRE... well, we will think about it.
For now you will leave the HRE, but you are free to rejoin.

Ok, that's good to know.
Two other questions:
1. Is there a way to stay as a Monastic Order while remaining in the HRE in any of the three 'normal' paths?
2. What'll happen to the Monastic Order Kingdom/Empire government reforms in each of the 4 paths?
 
A DD worth waiting for! Extremely happy with the scope of the DLC. And very excited to play in northern Europe again.:p
 
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Sounds awesome! Although a little disappointing that only the diplomacy/become emperor option has a mission for secularisation.

Also, since the other christian religions are getting some changes, can we please get an option to fight the league war for hussite/reformed too? Especially hussite! It's a nice addition to the game, but it kind of sucks that you're encouraged to switch to protestant since then you can fight the league war and make it the official HRE faith. Why can't we try and make hussite the one true faith of the HRE instead?
 
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In my experience the Prussian Confederation basically gives Poland the provinces for little cost, and they hold onto that land unless the player gets involved in a war. And then a lot of the times the Reformation is extremely slow to convert that land, especially with resistance to reformation modifiers allowing late-age Catholics to sit in a sea of blue undisturbed. Therefore, no Prussia.
Yes but I was talking with my mod that converts TO cores to Prussian cores when they are destroyed. IRL Prussia wasn't formed by some conquering outsider but by the reorganising of the order into a duchy inside Poland and then subsequently the Swedes demanding the independence of Prussia in a peace treaty.
 
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First of all yes a Baltic DLC! I'm already looking forward to the new Swedish missions.

The Teutonic Order is one of my favorite Countries to play and you made a really cool Mission Tree but I miss a little bit an option to stay TO and play Tal.
So you have the options to be Prussia>HRE/Germany and TO>Holy Horde but I would love to see an option for TO to be more of a really efficient medium Country.

For example, they had a very modern postal service, used cannons as one of the first Army's, and look at the Marienburg (It is the largest castle in the world measured by land area and had underfloor heating). Under their governance, woodlands were cleared and marshlands made arable, upon which many cities and villages were founded, including Marienburg and Königsberg.

Secondly, I miss some missions for historical flavor:

1. Burzenland: In 1211 the region was given to the Teutonic Knights by King Andrew II of Hungary -> revenge for the lost land: release Burzenland as a March under the TO

2. Knights from western European countries, such as England and France, journeyed to Prussia to participate in the seasonal campaigns -> a mission for some manpower or a mercenary army

3. Gotland: An invasion force under Grand Master Konrad von Jungingen conquered the island in 1398 and drove the Victual Brothers out of Gotland and the Baltic Sea. -> maybe a claim or purchase of Gotland

4. The western Prussian lands of the Vistula River Valley and the Brandenburg Neumark were ravaged by the Hussites during the Hussite Wars. -> maybe an event to get some money back from Bohemia for the destruction.

5. Possessions of the TO within the Holy Roman Empire were ruined in the German Peasants War from 1524 to 1525 and subsequently confiscated by Protestant territorial princes. ->If the imperial incident: Peasants War is active, the TO gets an event or something.

6. The Order also helped Charles V against the Schmalkaldic League -> maybe an event for the League War.

7. Connections between the Hansa and the Order:
Teutonic Order had its origins in a crusader hospital founded during the siege of Acre; the founders were German merchants from the towns of Lübeck and Bremen.
Hansa provided ships and support for the Teutonic Order's conquest of Prussia, in turn, the Teutonic Knights provided protection for the merchants of the Hansa.
Several of the towns that were members of the Hansa (Danzig, Elbing, Thorn, Kulm, Konigsberg and Marienburg) were under the direct authority of the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. -> this could also be its own mission tree.

So those were a few ideas. I hope I haven't bored you too much and that you don't misunderstand my criticism. You have put a lot of work into the German Order and I appreciate that. I am already looking forward to the next developer diaries.
 
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This is a good thing. If not You wouldn't be able to form Commonwealth as a holy horde.
Sure, but it also means you don't have a way of changing your tech-group to Eastern, so you can't get the Cossacks estate.
 
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Greetings! As @Ogele said, thanks for the feedback, and the very good reception of the new Teutonic content. :)

While back 10am was the DD time, is this now the new DD time? I keep coming back in the morning, but if its this time from now on its cool, just wannted to know
We've been posting DD's at 15:00 for a while, and we'll try to stick to this timetable. However, sometimes it will be a bit later if it's very content-heavy, as happened this week.
Also, no option for a Teutonic Order which has blobbed in Eastern Europe to go South and return to the Holy Land? For shame!
That's a choice for the player, not everything should be pathed in the mission trees. ;)
Does the Dissolve the Monasteries aspect only work if the church has at least 3% crownland? That would solve the problem of it being a button to spam money every few years until the end of the game rather than a historically-flavored mechanic.
Fair suggestion! We're going to try it out, as it looks as a good idea (and dissolving monasteries without the Clergy having land in your country is a bit immersion-breaking, actually).
Has the base effect of Anglicanism changed from +50% innovativeness gain to -10% tech cost? If so, that's not just a buff but an overpowered one. Great Britain would go from having -5% tech cost to effectively having -15% tech cost starting in the 1500s. Innovativeness gain is a much better bonus because it's less powerful and because it caps at 100 innovativeness.
We are already toying with these changes while testing them internally, as for making Anglicanism more interesting, so take it as WIP. As we moved the Innovativeness gain to of the new aspects, we replaced it with this Technology cost modifier. Right now it's nerfed to -5%, but we will continue testing to see if it's convincing for us, or we change it for something else.
The biggest problem with Anglicanism is that EU4 treats it as its own branch of Christianity rather than a weird form of Protestantism. In my opinion, the best solution from the start would have been to give British countries some unique Protestant church aspects rather than their own religion; however, assuming you won't remove an entire religious denomination from the game, the most important fix you can make to Anglicanism is removing the heretic opinion penalty between Anglicans and Protestants. Ideally, you'd make this into a moddable mechanic and apply it to the Council of Trent as well. (Catholics shouldn't hate Orthodox Christians because of Protestantism.)
Well, we have that 'problem' all around the game. And because of it the heretic opinion penalty works differently than the heathen opinion penalty, OFC. Historically, the relations between the Anglican branch and other Protestant confessions was not so smooth, as can be seen in some differences held with the Church of Scotland, or all the internal problems between the 'officialists' and the puritans before the Great Ejection of 1662.
Hoping you guys will be super liberal with any estate loyalty/influence requirements after I couldn't even complete the Mughals tree due to estate changes.

Also can't wait to figure out how to be a Holy Horde with Polish NIs
Yes, we're developing a more flexible approach regarding estate-based missions. Actually, we fixed the problem in the Mughal mission tree in 1.33. ;)
Will there be any new monuments in the region of DLC's scope?

Or is the monument part of Leviathan DLC only and there will be no further support for it?
Yes, there will be (a few) more monuments included in 1.34. This will come as part of the update, for Leviathan DLC owners. And we will present them in a future DD, of course. ;)
 
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Well, we have that 'problem' all around the game. And because of it the heretic opinion penalty works differently than the heathen opinion penalty, OFC. Historically, the relations between the Anglican branch and other Protestant confessions was not so smooth, as can be seen in some differences held with the Church of Scotland, or all the internal problems between the 'officialists' and the puritans before the Great Ejection of 1662.
There is already reduced penalty for Coptic. Maybe Catholic can have increased penalty. This penalty can start in Age of Reformation and end after Religious War. Just put another modifier like misguided_heretic = yes with opposite effect and some flag to trigger it.

Base negative opinion for heretics can be reduced and Catholic can keep current with this new modifier when it matters.
 
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The more I think
I really don't like all this flexibility that this game has. I like to play historically railroaded.
I really don't feel like mission trees introduce any flexibility in the game. I don't like that by putting so much effort on those they neglect the real game, which is (for me, anyway) about making your country evolve, not making it follow preexisting paths, be them pseudo-historical or a fantasy the content creators decided you should follow.
 
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Yes, there will be (a few) more monuments included in 1.34. This will come as part of the update, for Leviathan DLC owners. And we will present them in a future DD, of course. ;)

What are your plans for monuments? Is it to primarily add these in the DLC lands (Scandinavia and the Baltics) or to add them over the entire area?
 
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Imagining Livonia, Estonia and Curonia actually having things to do once they exist.
And Finland and Sápmi.. Maybe even Karelia, given the later tag appearing for Russia.

Sweden should get missions and events regarding the Finns and the Sámi, and perhaps even allow for playing as an independent Finland if e.g. Anjala Conspiracy would succeed. (As something else than a national idea)

In 1444 there still were some Finnish and Norse pagans existing. Maybe even something related to those?
 
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