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Hey All!
Community Ambassador @Ryagi back to present our third Mod Spotlight. This time we look at dedicated community modder @flogi and his work on The Idea Variation.
The Idea Variatoin spices up the game with additional Government reforms, new estates, and of course as the name suggests, Ideas!
With no further delay, I'll let Flogi and his plethora of new idea groups take it away.
Hello fellow EU IV lovers,
I am Flogi the creator of the Idea Variation mod for EU IV and today I want to introduce you to my mod which was originally released at the start of 2016: It all started with the vision of not having to pick the same idea groups over and over again in multiplayer to have a competitive army.
The name Idea Variation comes from this simple idea: Have variations in your ideas choosing and provide not only one, but ideally many “optimal” ways of playing the game while having some variation in approaches, but remaining “competitive” at the same time.
With the huge development cycle EUIV as a game went through over the years, Idea Variation also changed quite massively over time.
Ideas
The mod contains over 50 new idea groups, with most of the vanilla idea groups completely changed according to the balance of the mod as well. That includes 27 unique religious idea groups for every religion in the vanilla game and for some more added by Shattered Europa at the time.
Religions are not the only special idea groups though – every government type (except pirate republics maybe at this point you could argue) also have their special idea group, long before vanilla added other options besides aristocratic and plutocratic ideas.
Every idea group combination also adds a new policy, which results in over 600 new policies added by the mod. Every idea group also comes with a unique set of events, similar to the idea group specific events in vanilla.
All of the new Idea Variation Groups; Monarchy, Republican, Dictatorship and Theocracy are dependent on the respective government type and automatically change when the government type changes.
Government Reforms
Another big part of the mod is the new government reform system. As exited as I was about the change of the government reforms when they were introduced in the Dharma patch, I was quickly bummed that there mostly were obvious choices in the reform tree from a pro gaming perspective. When you are fighting in a multiplayer game you take manpower over tax efficiency, that is simply how it works. But what was most disappointing to me was that one could not choose the order of the reforms taken. I managed to completely game the system if you will and I think never felt smarter when I had the idea how to do this.
When you start Idea Variation the government reforms look quite empty.
The newly added Tooltip on the right is just that a tooltip. Clicking on those buttons will not do anything. They are just there to provide information.
You as a player, and the AI can freely choose the order of the reform tiers (with some exceptions, also displayed by the tooltip) by decision. That allows for tons of different combinations and approaches in multiplayer and singleplayer obviously. For example, by picking the right combination of ideas and government reforms you could be head-to-head in the colonial race with Spain and Portugal.
Some freely picked government reforms.
Estates
The mod also adds quite some new stuff for the estates, like new Interactions and new Privileges. I also added the Janissary Estate before it was cool and introduced the mentioned Nationalists.
Singleplayer or Multiplayer?
After having so many multiplayer options you might ask if you can or should play this mod in singleplayer at all. You can definitely play it in singleplayer if you are searching for a challenge. Idea Variation adds essentially three more difficulty options. You can give yourself debuffs as a player, you can buff the AI (Hard Mode) and you can buff the AI even more (Intense Mode). The latter I would only recommend to more experienced players as the bonuses the AI receives over the ages can be quite something to deal with if you do not expand rapidly in the early game.
Hoping I did not lose you yet, I could go on about advisor changes, delve into the details of why the Fleetbase Idea casus belli is my favorite CB in the game, or tell you about all the little changes I have made (not even touching on monuments).
If I have sparked your interest, maybe you want to give this a try now and discover all the stuff not mentioned
Important links:
There’s also a bunch of addons that make Idea Variation compatible with a number of other mods.
Cheers everyone!
Flogi
We hope you found this spotlight insightful.
In the future, we would love to give the stage to lesser-known works, ideally crafting a good mix of the big projects we all know and love and some diamonds in the rough, maybe even unreleased future modding gems... If you have any suggestions or comments on this spotlight or our spotlights in general make yourself heard in the comments below!
We'll be back next time with more modding goodies.
Community Ambassador @Ryagi back to present our third Mod Spotlight. This time we look at dedicated community modder @flogi and his work on The Idea Variation.
The Idea Variatoin spices up the game with additional Government reforms, new estates, and of course as the name suggests, Ideas!
With no further delay, I'll let Flogi and his plethora of new idea groups take it away.
Hello fellow EU IV lovers,
I am Flogi the creator of the Idea Variation mod for EU IV and today I want to introduce you to my mod which was originally released at the start of 2016: It all started with the vision of not having to pick the same idea groups over and over again in multiplayer to have a competitive army.
The name Idea Variation comes from this simple idea: Have variations in your ideas choosing and provide not only one, but ideally many “optimal” ways of playing the game while having some variation in approaches, but remaining “competitive” at the same time.
With the huge development cycle EUIV as a game went through over the years, Idea Variation also changed quite massively over time.
Ideas
The mod contains over 50 new idea groups, with most of the vanilla idea groups completely changed according to the balance of the mod as well. That includes 27 unique religious idea groups for every religion in the vanilla game and for some more added by Shattered Europa at the time.
Religions are not the only special idea groups though – every government type (except pirate republics maybe at this point you could argue) also have their special idea group, long before vanilla added other options besides aristocratic and plutocratic ideas.
Every idea group combination also adds a new policy, which results in over 600 new policies added by the mod. Every idea group also comes with a unique set of events, similar to the idea group specific events in vanilla.
All of the new Idea Variation Groups; Monarchy, Republican, Dictatorship and Theocracy are dependent on the respective government type and automatically change when the government type changes.
Government Reforms
Another big part of the mod is the new government reform system. As exited as I was about the change of the government reforms when they were introduced in the Dharma patch, I was quickly bummed that there mostly were obvious choices in the reform tree from a pro gaming perspective. When you are fighting in a multiplayer game you take manpower over tax efficiency, that is simply how it works. But what was most disappointing to me was that one could not choose the order of the reforms taken. I managed to completely game the system if you will and I think never felt smarter when I had the idea how to do this.
When you start Idea Variation the government reforms look quite empty.
The newly added Tooltip on the right is just that a tooltip. Clicking on those buttons will not do anything. They are just there to provide information.
You as a player, and the AI can freely choose the order of the reform tiers (with some exceptions, also displayed by the tooltip) by decision. That allows for tons of different combinations and approaches in multiplayer and singleplayer obviously. For example, by picking the right combination of ideas and government reforms you could be head-to-head in the colonial race with Spain and Portugal.
Some freely picked government reforms.
Estates
The mod also adds quite some new stuff for the estates, like new Interactions and new Privileges. I also added the Janissary Estate before it was cool and introduced the mentioned Nationalists.
Singleplayer or Multiplayer?
After having so many multiplayer options you might ask if you can or should play this mod in singleplayer at all. You can definitely play it in singleplayer if you are searching for a challenge. Idea Variation adds essentially three more difficulty options. You can give yourself debuffs as a player, you can buff the AI (Hard Mode) and you can buff the AI even more (Intense Mode). The latter I would only recommend to more experienced players as the bonuses the AI receives over the ages can be quite something to deal with if you do not expand rapidly in the early game.
Hoping I did not lose you yet, I could go on about advisor changes, delve into the details of why the Fleetbase Idea casus belli is my favorite CB in the game, or tell you about all the little changes I have made (not even touching on monuments).
If I have sparked your interest, maybe you want to give this a try now and discover all the stuff not mentioned
Important links:
There’s also a bunch of addons that make Idea Variation compatible with a number of other mods.
Cheers everyone!
Flogi
We hope you found this spotlight insightful.
In the future, we would love to give the stage to lesser-known works, ideally crafting a good mix of the big projects we all know and love and some diamonds in the rough, maybe even unreleased future modding gems... If you have any suggestions or comments on this spotlight or our spotlights in general make yourself heard in the comments below!
We'll be back next time with more modding goodies.
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