Welcome to the third Developer Diary for Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise. As you probably know by now, we’ve decided to postpone the launch of the expansion, now targeting early next year. The main reason for this is that with the success of Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV, we at Paradox Development Studio have leveled up both in our expectations of ourselves and the demands of our fans. We could have finished this on time and even with the quality we are now used to. That is no longer enough – we want more. So for us on the team, this means that the basic production plan for the expansion stays fixed - but we’ve added lots of extra time for polish and tweaking.
Enough about business! Onward to the actual expansion! One of the major goals of this expansion is that we wanted to make North America a more interesting place to start in. As it is now, once you’ve wiped out the Huron or vassalized the Creek, you spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for the English to come and steal your land. So we are going to expand North American nation options by adding a number of features that you will hear more about soon.
However, today, I will talk about one of the simpler things we’ve done - just adding more nations to North America.
First of all, there are still ‘uncolonized’ lands there. As always, this land isn’t empty, but best understood as not firmly under the control of any of the major tribes. European settlers or larger tribes can simply squeeze out or absorb local population with little trouble. But for the more organized tribes, you will need to fight a war if you want to take their land.
So we’ve added more than 20 new Native American states to the map. To fit all these in, we had to make some room - so we have removed some of the formerly useless wasteland and added even more provinces.
Why do this? Well, historically speaking, it’s very important to remember the Americas were heavily populated by organized societies. Scholars estimate that New World populations before Columbus could have been between 50 and 100 million (this includes Meso-America and South America), not to mention the sophistication of the Powhatan culture, marked by its walled capital, and the fact that the Mi’kmaq nation of Eastern Canada had trade connections with other nations in the Ohio Valley. Giving these societies the recognition that they are due is part of our mission as a strategy game developer.
On the game design side, more nations will mean more new challenges for players. Though it is certainly not going to be easy to turn these one-province minor North American states into global powers, it will present new ways of understanding the map, allow you to explore new strategies and, hopefully, present a greater variety of worlds for European colonizers – even if they don’t use our new random New World Map option!
Some of this is personal as well. We’ve added the Lenape - a personal favorite of mine for nostalgic reasons. This tribe was in Europa Universalis II back in the day and my favorite country to play was England. Lenape held a position on the eastern seaboard of North America that made them the ideal first target over there. Know your enemy and all that, so this encouraged me to read up on the history. This seems to happen a lot when you find something interesting in these games
Historically the Lenape where based around the Delaware River and gave names to many regional features, including Manhattan. The Lenape didn’t make it into the first Europa Universalis IV release - but now they are back Give them a warm welcome. No, not with gunpowder. Other examples of tribes new to Europa Universalis IV are the Shoshone, the Pawnee and the Potawatomi to name a few (also check out the enclosed screenshot).
We have a wealth of new nations for you to interact with and, let’s not forget, to be inspired to learn more about. See if you can find all the new tribes on the map
Next week I´ll expand a little on what you can do when playing one of these new Native American nations. They have some unique mechanics that we are very excited about.
Enough about business! Onward to the actual expansion! One of the major goals of this expansion is that we wanted to make North America a more interesting place to start in. As it is now, once you’ve wiped out the Huron or vassalized the Creek, you spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for the English to come and steal your land. So we are going to expand North American nation options by adding a number of features that you will hear more about soon.
However, today, I will talk about one of the simpler things we’ve done - just adding more nations to North America.
First of all, there are still ‘uncolonized’ lands there. As always, this land isn’t empty, but best understood as not firmly under the control of any of the major tribes. European settlers or larger tribes can simply squeeze out or absorb local population with little trouble. But for the more organized tribes, you will need to fight a war if you want to take their land.
So we’ve added more than 20 new Native American states to the map. To fit all these in, we had to make some room - so we have removed some of the formerly useless wasteland and added even more provinces.
Why do this? Well, historically speaking, it’s very important to remember the Americas were heavily populated by organized societies. Scholars estimate that New World populations before Columbus could have been between 50 and 100 million (this includes Meso-America and South America), not to mention the sophistication of the Powhatan culture, marked by its walled capital, and the fact that the Mi’kmaq nation of Eastern Canada had trade connections with other nations in the Ohio Valley. Giving these societies the recognition that they are due is part of our mission as a strategy game developer.
On the game design side, more nations will mean more new challenges for players. Though it is certainly not going to be easy to turn these one-province minor North American states into global powers, it will present new ways of understanding the map, allow you to explore new strategies and, hopefully, present a greater variety of worlds for European colonizers – even if they don’t use our new random New World Map option!
Some of this is personal as well. We’ve added the Lenape - a personal favorite of mine for nostalgic reasons. This tribe was in Europa Universalis II back in the day and my favorite country to play was England. Lenape held a position on the eastern seaboard of North America that made them the ideal first target over there. Know your enemy and all that, so this encouraged me to read up on the history. This seems to happen a lot when you find something interesting in these games
Historically the Lenape where based around the Delaware River and gave names to many regional features, including Manhattan. The Lenape didn’t make it into the first Europa Universalis IV release - but now they are back
Give them a warm welcome. No, not with gunpowder. Other examples of tribes new to Europa Universalis IV are the Shoshone, the Pawnee and the Potawatomi to name a few (also check out the enclosed screenshot). We have a wealth of new nations for you to interact with and, let’s not forget, to be inspired to learn more about. See if you can find all the new tribes on the map
Next week I´ll expand a little on what you can do when playing one of these new Native American nations. They have some unique mechanics that we are very excited about.
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