The expansion Europa Universalis IV: Conquest of Paradise has now been out for six weeks, therefore I felt this is a good time for some general "post mortem" thoughts. But as I sat down to write this dev diary for Conquest of Paradise, it struck me that “Post Mortem” is not really a good term for this kind of thing; Post Partum would be better 
In the old days maybe the death analogy worked...you made a feature list, finished it, published the game and then moved on to the next game. This was the life cycle of computer game development. But now we produce patches and expansions and constant updates and our games and expansions are more of a continuous project; more analogous to giving birth and watching the game grow and pushing it in interesting directions, intervening when necessary. It takes a long time for a game to really leave our homes.
Conquest of Paradise is a special expansion for us, because it's the first expansion for Europa Universalis IV. We have said this a lot, but Conquest of Paradise was a very ambitious project and we did face quite a few challenges when creating it.
We made major changes to the game that was challenging both technically and design-wise.
The Random New World completely randomized parts the map which presented a number of challenges as the map has always been constant in our games, everything from placing trade nodes to finding a decent distribution of American nations. For me the exploration game why always one of the big fun factors, sending an explorer into the unknown and see what you can see. I hope that this is now a part of the game that can live longer, past the point where you have played the game so much you know exactly which provinces you should explore at which tech level.
We introduced dynamic colonial countries which represents a break from things PDS games have not done in the past (and also something that could open up interesting possibilities for the future). Here we wanted to add the feeling that your colonies have a mind of their own, being on your side but also having their own plans that can lead to unexpected results. Personally I think it gives a good feel to the game, but I think there are more things we could do to improve interaction with your colonies. I also think we should be careful if we want to expand this mechanic to other areas, while you get more interesting and unexpected situation you also take away control from the player and that’s an area where you want to be careful.
We also created unique mechanics for the North American peoples. We wanted to add Native American states with their own tech progression and buildings improve the pacing and create options for America’s original inhabitants and make the gameplay between the tribes more exciting with migration and federation mechanics. We found (not all that unexpected) that there was some balance challenges to this, but on the whole I think it is an interesting route that could be extended to other parts of the world. The idea came up when I played a game on the Indian subcontinent and felt that the fun decisions that make up an EU4 game where too far in between, which comes from the fact that the pacing is originally designed for European nations.
We know the release of Conquest of Paradise wasn´t as smooth as we would have wanted, so from our perspective, we are immensely happy that you have had patience and that you enjoy the expansion and continue playing Europa Universalis IV. We want you to know that we are working ongoing with patching and updating the game and expansion. And we really want to say that we appreciate all the feedback we get from you, good and bad, and, even if we don’t respond as much as we would like, we do hear you!
We have recently released the 1.5 patch with a focus on bug fixes, balancing and general improvements as well as including a greatly improved naval invasion AI and we are continuously working to improve the game, some of the more important fixes you will see a mini-update/hotfix coming to a steam client near you very soon.
That's it for now, you can read all the devdiaries for EU4:CoP here!
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...lis-IV-Conquest-of-Paradise-Dev-Diary-Archive
Going forward, our work continues on improving the game, both by modifying and improving the base game. We will also soon kick-off the development diaries for the upcoming expansion Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations. Looking forward to tell you more about the future plans in the next dev diary!
(And a special thanks to our beta testers who help us improve the game and everyone who Europa Universalis IV development alive by purchasing the expansion!)
PS. View all the EU4: CoP videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4hR-M4rl7udRfXBde0Ebw9NTnExOcZNZ
In the old days maybe the death analogy worked...you made a feature list, finished it, published the game and then moved on to the next game. This was the life cycle of computer game development. But now we produce patches and expansions and constant updates and our games and expansions are more of a continuous project; more analogous to giving birth and watching the game grow and pushing it in interesting directions, intervening when necessary. It takes a long time for a game to really leave our homes.
Conquest of Paradise is a special expansion for us, because it's the first expansion for Europa Universalis IV. We have said this a lot, but Conquest of Paradise was a very ambitious project and we did face quite a few challenges when creating it.
We made major changes to the game that was challenging both technically and design-wise.
The Random New World completely randomized parts the map which presented a number of challenges as the map has always been constant in our games, everything from placing trade nodes to finding a decent distribution of American nations. For me the exploration game why always one of the big fun factors, sending an explorer into the unknown and see what you can see. I hope that this is now a part of the game that can live longer, past the point where you have played the game so much you know exactly which provinces you should explore at which tech level.
We introduced dynamic colonial countries which represents a break from things PDS games have not done in the past (and also something that could open up interesting possibilities for the future). Here we wanted to add the feeling that your colonies have a mind of their own, being on your side but also having their own plans that can lead to unexpected results. Personally I think it gives a good feel to the game, but I think there are more things we could do to improve interaction with your colonies. I also think we should be careful if we want to expand this mechanic to other areas, while you get more interesting and unexpected situation you also take away control from the player and that’s an area where you want to be careful.
We also created unique mechanics for the North American peoples. We wanted to add Native American states with their own tech progression and buildings improve the pacing and create options for America’s original inhabitants and make the gameplay between the tribes more exciting with migration and federation mechanics. We found (not all that unexpected) that there was some balance challenges to this, but on the whole I think it is an interesting route that could be extended to other parts of the world. The idea came up when I played a game on the Indian subcontinent and felt that the fun decisions that make up an EU4 game where too far in between, which comes from the fact that the pacing is originally designed for European nations.
We know the release of Conquest of Paradise wasn´t as smooth as we would have wanted, so from our perspective, we are immensely happy that you have had patience and that you enjoy the expansion and continue playing Europa Universalis IV. We want you to know that we are working ongoing with patching and updating the game and expansion. And we really want to say that we appreciate all the feedback we get from you, good and bad, and, even if we don’t respond as much as we would like, we do hear you!
We have recently released the 1.5 patch with a focus on bug fixes, balancing and general improvements as well as including a greatly improved naval invasion AI and we are continuously working to improve the game, some of the more important fixes you will see a mini-update/hotfix coming to a steam client near you very soon.
That's it for now, you can read all the devdiaries for EU4:CoP here!
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...lis-IV-Conquest-of-Paradise-Dev-Diary-Archive
Going forward, our work continues on improving the game, both by modifying and improving the base game. We will also soon kick-off the development diaries for the upcoming expansion Europa Universalis IV: Wealth of Nations. Looking forward to tell you more about the future plans in the next dev diary!
(And a special thanks to our beta testers who help us improve the game and everyone who Europa Universalis IV development alive by purchasing the expansion!)
PS. View all the EU4: CoP videos here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4hR-M4rl7udRfXBde0Ebw9NTnExOcZNZ
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