Good morning! We’ve talked about Imperial Incidents in previous dev diaries, and since then the design and UI has been refined quite a lot. Today I’ll be revealing two more Imperial Incidents as well as changes to the Great Peasants’ War.
Decline of the Hanseatic League
The EUIV period saw the Hanseatic League fall from the dominant commercial power in Northern Europe to a minor clique of merchant guilds. If Lubeck loses its dominance in its home trade node after the Age of Discovery, they will receive an event where they can choose to petition the Emperor for aid. This triggers an Imperial Incident in which the Emperor has three options:
The Reformers Protest
The Reformers Protest is an Imperial Incident that fires after the Protestant League is victorious in the League War if Reformed countries make up a sufficiently large portion of the total number of Princes in the Empire.
This Incident inducts the new Protestant Emperor into their new role by forcing them into a major decision. The Emperor has three options:
I first talked in detail about the Great Peasants’ War in October, but since then we’ve decided to expand on it to give more agency to players with an interest in either side of the conflict. Here are the most significant changes we made:
A Message from our Artist and our UX Designer
A valued and talented team member, our artist, is leaving us today to work on another PDS project. As it was their last day, I asked if there was anything they'd like to share with the community before their departure. This was their response:
The feature that our artist enjoyed the most was probably working with the Hegemon icons. The shape and visuals for them are something new but still holds that EU4 spirit in them. The favorite is of course the naval icon with the fabulous unicorn.
Other things they loved to work on was making the new bg for the settings screen. It now speaks unity and actually… makes sense?
The HRE windows and pop-up was of course a challenge but thanks to our UX designer they made the interface work and look beautiful as well! Look at those curtains, so smooth.
Our artist also wants to add that “At the end of the day it’s always been so nice to see the reactions to the new stuff we add or update and what you, the community enjoy to see from us and what makes your heart tick with joy when it comes to Europa Universalis 4”
As our UX designer’s last day on the project, they'd like to share the process behind the new HRE screen:
“The HRE was my favorite to work on, because it was a big challenge.
I always start exploring ideas, different layouts and how to display the information. After a few iterations, we decided to move on with the 3rd idea."
3 different layouts and explorations
As we started developing, we realized that the initial idea for incidents -beautiful and fancy tapestry- was not clear enough. So we decided to go on with buttons instead.
Because of that the entire layout needed to change, as we didn’t need all that space for incidents.
To show a new idea to the team, I did a simple wireframe, moving the reforms to the upper part and incidents down. Also decided to display imperial authority and dominant faith in a clearer way.
.png "Screenshot 2020-04-14 at 09.39.11 (1).png")
Wireframe to discuss with the team
Mockup based on the wireframe
And finally, for the last iteration, we noticed that the numbers inside the buttons were not clear and didn’t help players to make a decision. To solve that, I suggested using an icon representing what kind of decision was that and added the numbers of supporters.
Last mockup
“It was an honor to be part of EU4 and hope you all enjoy Emperor!”
We all wish both our artist and our UX Designer the best of luck in the future, and we're sure they'll go on to do great things at PDS.
That’s all for today! Next week Groogy will talk about a new feature coming in Emperor as well as a very cool feature for Custom Nations. And since I’m here I’ll also reveal that the much-anticipated Hussite/Bohemia dev diary is scheduled for the week after next. Hope you all have a great week!
Decline of the Hanseatic League
The EUIV period saw the Hanseatic League fall from the dominant commercial power in Northern Europe to a minor clique of merchant guilds. If Lubeck loses its dominance in its home trade node after the Age of Discovery, they will receive an event where they can choose to petition the Emperor for aid. This triggers an Imperial Incident in which the Emperor has three options:
- Ignore the plight of the Hanseatic League. The Emperor gets a harsh opinion penalty with Lubeck and its League members.
- Reinforce the Hanseatic League by asking the Free Cities of the Empire to join. All Free Cities are promoted to join the Hanseatic League, and each one that joins gives Imperial Authority to the Emperor. Lubeck and its League members will appreciate this.
- Proclaim an Embargo against the League’s rival. The dominant power in the Lubeck node gets reduced trade power in several trade nodes, and the Emperor gets an opinion bonus with Lubeck and its League members.
The Reformers Protest
The Reformers Protest is an Imperial Incident that fires after the Protestant League is victorious in the League War if Reformed countries make up a sufficiently large portion of the total number of Princes in the Empire.
This Incident inducts the new Protestant Emperor into their new role by forcing them into a major decision. The Emperor has three options:
- Refuse to make any compromise and protect the hard-won victory of the Protestant League. Choosing this option will prompt all Reformed Princes to reconsider their membership in the Empire, with larger AI nations being much more likely to leave than smaller AI nations.
- Set Religious Peace in the Empire. Protestant will no longer be the official faith of the Empire. Emperors and electors can now be of any Christian religion. This will satisfy the Reformed Princes, but also makes it possible for the Catholics to return to power in the future.
- Abdicate the Imperial throne and proclaim the Reformed faith to be the official religion of the Empire. An AI Emperor will only pick this option if they have been reduced to a single province, or if they have less than 50 warscore against a Reformed Prince.
I first talked in detail about the Great Peasants’ War in October, but since then we’ve decided to expand on it to give more agency to players with an interest in either side of the conflict. Here are the most significant changes we made:
- The Emperor can now use the Crush the Peasantry CB while the GPW is ongoing, and can target any Peasant Republic in the HRE regardless of border distance. This allows the Emperor to actively take the fight to the peasants.
- Added new Peasant Revolt CB for Peasant Republics. It is usable during the GPW. It can also be used after the GPW if the peasantry manage to enforce their demands on the Emperor. This CB allows you to force other HRE Princes to become Peasant Republics, giving agency to the peasant side of the conflict.
- Added decisions for both the Emperor and Peasant Republics to end the GPW early and trigger the Imperial Incident if they accumulate enough score for their side. Tooltips on this decision will show the current score.
- When a newly-formed Peasant Republic is forced to change their government during the GPW, the total score is moved in favour of the aristocracy.
- Score is added to the peasant side when a Prince becomes a Peasant Republic during the GPW regardless of how it happened.
A Message from our Artist and our UX Designer
A valued and talented team member, our artist, is leaving us today to work on another PDS project. As it was their last day, I asked if there was anything they'd like to share with the community before their departure. This was their response:
The feature that our artist enjoyed the most was probably working with the Hegemon icons. The shape and visuals for them are something new but still holds that EU4 spirit in them. The favorite is of course the naval icon with the fabulous unicorn.
Other things they loved to work on was making the new bg for the settings screen. It now speaks unity and actually… makes sense?
The HRE windows and pop-up was of course a challenge but thanks to our UX designer they made the interface work and look beautiful as well! Look at those curtains, so smooth.
Our artist also wants to add that “At the end of the day it’s always been so nice to see the reactions to the new stuff we add or update and what you, the community enjoy to see from us and what makes your heart tick with joy when it comes to Europa Universalis 4”
As our UX designer’s last day on the project, they'd like to share the process behind the new HRE screen:
“The HRE was my favorite to work on, because it was a big challenge.
I always start exploring ideas, different layouts and how to display the information. After a few iterations, we decided to move on with the 3rd idea."
3 different layouts and explorations
As we started developing, we realized that the initial idea for incidents -beautiful and fancy tapestry- was not clear enough. So we decided to go on with buttons instead.
Because of that the entire layout needed to change, as we didn’t need all that space for incidents.
To show a new idea to the team, I did a simple wireframe, moving the reforms to the upper part and incidents down. Also decided to display imperial authority and dominant faith in a clearer way.
Wireframe to discuss with the team
Mockup based on the wireframe
And finally, for the last iteration, we noticed that the numbers inside the buttons were not clear and didn’t help players to make a decision. To solve that, I suggested using an icon representing what kind of decision was that and added the numbers of supporters.
Last mockup
“It was an honor to be part of EU4 and hope you all enjoy Emperor!”
We all wish both our artist and our UX Designer the best of luck in the future, and we're sure they'll go on to do great things at PDS.
That’s all for today! Next week Groogy will talk about a new feature coming in Emperor as well as a very cool feature for Custom Nations. And since I’m here I’ll also reveal that the much-anticipated Hussite/Bohemia dev diary is scheduled for the week after next. Hope you all have a great week!
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