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Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 20th of June 2023 - 1.35.4 release & History Lessons DLC

Greetings, and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV Dev Diary!

Today patch 1.35.4 was released, and with it we’re fixing most of the issues reported by the community after the launch of EUIV: Domination, including the most pressing ones that were already covered in the Roadmap DD, making more than 170 fixes. We hope that it improves the overall state of the game as per the feedback that we’ve received during the past week. For any further issues that are found while playing, please use the Bug Reports subforum to report bugs and the Changelog post for any questions or comments regarding the patch.

Along with the 1.35.4 patch we’re also releasing a new type of DLC, Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons, covering two countries for this release, China and Japan. Let me explain a bit about what this is about, and why we are releasing this DLC now.

This project started around one year ago, its objective being to add some more immersion to EUIV while playing it, in the format of a podcast. After some design discussions and planning, the Team decided to create a new type of Music DLC - but instead of listening to new songs in the in-game audio player, the tracks will be composed of lessons about the history of a certain country, similar to podcasts’ episodes. To prepare for this release, we made changes in the Audio player that were already released with the 1.35 update - so, these new DLCs work pretty much the same as any other Music Pack, so they shouldn’t impact the stability of the 1.35.4 patch. And why did we decide to release the DLCs now, and not with 1.35? Basically, to dedicate most of our resources to the release of 1.35 and Domination, and to make sure that the release of the History Lessons was also done with the quality we wanted for them, so problems in one of the releases wouldn’t impact much on the other.

Taking into account the new content that we were aiming to create for EUIV: Domination, we decided to start with two of the countries in East Asia most attractive for our players, China and Japan, which also have a rich and engaging History in the time frame of 1444-1820. We were lucky enough to count for the project with two experienced podcasters, Laszlo Montgomery from ‘The China History Podcast’, and Isaac Meyer from ‘The History of Japan Podcast’. Along with the Team, they prepared and recorded the episodes, 26 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - China, and 35 for Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons - Japan.

In the case of China, you will find out a lot of interesting contextual information about the Ming and Qing dynasties, how the Mandate of Heaven was handled, and the relationships between China and its neighbors. Meanwhile, the context for Japan is more focused on the different Daimyos that are present in EUIV in 1444, and the start, development and ending of the Sengoku Jidai, the civil wars that spread out in the country during the 15th and 16th centuries, and that finished with the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate.

We hope that you enjoy this new type of content as much as we’ve done while preparing it, specifically, those who love History as much as the members of the Team and I do. And speaking of me, I was also invited to record two special episodes of Laszlo’s and Isaac’s podcasts which will go live this week, in which we discuss how we worked on the project, and why is so interesting for us the historical context of Europa Universalis IV, and thus this project itself!

I also hope that you all have fun with the 1.35.4 patch of EUIV as well! Next week we will have the last DD before the summer break, in which I’ll make a retrospective of Domination, and talk a bit about the roadmap for the following months. Cheers, bye!
 
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Mindel said:
Really? We're even going to get a podcast explaining to us how Ming was completely destroyed by flooding and earthquakes in 1445?
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It was destroyed and fixed by game devs, apparently, but some more research needs to be done on this topic. :D
 
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Will there be transcripts posted for these eventually? I would not mind subtitles in-game, but I am not sure how practical that would be without getting in the way of gameplay. I am deaf so, unfortunately, I will be missing out on this.

If anyone can recommend an app for voice-to-text transcription, that would also be great.
 
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This is a very interesting idea and I really like it in principle. I don't know how it will feel to listen to a podcast while playing the game though. I imagine it may be a bit difficult to listen to someone speaking while reading events. A "pause music" hotkey might be useful.
 
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Utik said:
This is a very interesting idea and I really like it in principle. I don't know how it will feel to listen to a podcast while playing the game though. I imagine it may be a bit difficult to listen to someone speaking while reading events. A "pause music" hotkey might be useful.
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I've been listening to podcasts/audiobooks while Paradoxing for yonks
 
Isn't the start of the Sengoku Jidai completely different in reality to how it works in EU4?
 
I cannot fathom how anyone can take in a podcast at the same time as playing a Paradox game, but maybe these interact with the interface so that you can look at things while you are paused?

Definitely a worthwhile experiment.
 
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Sorry, as much as I appreciate the effort, not my thing. I do my real history lessons outside my EU4 sessions, and try to immerse myself in the situations of the game world as they are happening regardless of whether the historically "should " happen.
 
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I think the Europa Universalis IV: History Lessons idea is fantastic, though a bit expensive. It should be 1,99 or 2,99 euros.

Also, i hope the performance of the game has improved (at least a bit).

Ty devs
 
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In-game "History Lessons" is an interesting idea, but I think it'll need some significant changes to the in-game music player to be truly useful.

For example:
  • Keyboard shortcut to pause/unpause (suggested by @Utik)
  • Some way to automatically restart the podcast at the same place you left off last time you quit the game.
    • Or maybe it should be ~30s prior to the point you reached when you last quit? But this could quickly get annoying if you're loading up the game multiple times to test something.
  • Ability to "seek" within each track.
    • If I get wrapped up in something in-game and realise I haven't been listening for the past couple of minutes, I want to be able to rewind. I can do this with external sources, but not with the in-game music player (you have to start over from the beginning).
    • If I quit the game partway through a podcast and the auto-restart feature mentioned above bugs out for some reason, I want to be able to manually choose my own starting point. (Errors of this kind are relatively frequent on dedicated platforms, so I imagine they'll be extremely frequent in a platform that's not primarily about podcasts, eg. EU4.)
 
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