Europa Universalis 4

What’s really great is that they already took a lot of time recently digging themselves out of technical debt before they even started on this expansion.

Yeah, and you wouldn’t spend that much time addressing technical debt unless you planned to continue to develop on it for some time.

Or several ppl were removed / left from the project after estimation / planning time.

After a few months of working on it, they revealed what they’re going to be doing with the Estates system.

I’m all for reducing the micro that estates caused!

I’m glad that they are trying to polish up some of the older mechanics that are disjointed.

The overhaul to Catholicism coming sounds pretty great, especially with the way it ties in to Clergy estate.

So, apparently while the coders were busy on getting everything transitioned to 64-bit and digging themselves out of the tech debt they’ve accumulated over the years, the content team was busy creating a new free update: Manchu. They are refining the gameplay in Asia, giving a human Ming player some challenges in the early game (and making it likely that an AI Ming will fall apart as they historically did) but also making it so you don’t instantly implode the second you border a nation like Russia.

Sounds like there’s another dev diary or two to cover nations like the Oirat so there’s more to come, but the update is scheduled to come out next month with the 64-bit upgrade.

Niiice, thanks Kevin.

More on the Manchu/Qing:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/development-diary-3-of-september-2019.1239791/

ARE YOU OK @KevinC!!!

New dev diary:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/euiv-development-diary-10th-of-september-2019.1242758/

TL;DR: The 1.29 Manchu Update will release on Tuesday the 17th of September; and the dev diary shows some missions and events for various nations in Asia.

I am in shambles over here!! I knew we could count on you, though, Jorn. :) Thanks for posting the link, time to dive in!

Just got back into the game and loving my revised Europe. Ottomans are gone, France blew up and is gone, Castille has one province left after inhereting Burgundy and promptly exploding. Aragon owns most of Iberian peninusla and 1/2 of France. Scotland almost gobbled up England before Kilmare took all their territory. Hungary was gone but has rememerged. Venice is huge, Mamluks are huge…

I’m playing as Sweden and have followed a pretty standard Baltic expansion path… but these alternative historical paths have been great.

Standard start, random lucky nation’s, no real mods of note.

Well that explains it!

Only way to play for me! I got so tired of the same things happening every game

What’s your hour count at?

I have 500 hours in EU4 (total lightweight) and never felt the need for random lucky nations. Different strokes for different blokes and all that.

Just passed 800, but the last few years I dust it off once or twice a year and drop a smooth 50 on it before losing interest again.

Was hoping Imperator would scratch the same itch with a new vibe… but no, not yet at least

I know what you mean. Over the years I have come back to EU4 repeatedly to donate another 50 hours of my life before a new shiny game distracts me again. It really is my desert island game, I could play it forever if I had to without going crazy. I have a bit over 100 hours in Imperator. It mostly scratches the same itch for me, but when they started talking about overhauling mechanics I left it and plan to revisit when 1.2 officially rolls out whenever that is.

It’s also helped to improve my knowledge of geography a great deal. I met someone from Lithuania the other week, and she was stoked that I knew how large Lithuania used to be and other things about its history.

I need to start playing some EU4 again, there are still many countries I have not tried yet and lucky random nations may be a nice spark of variety as well.

This last game is about the craziest that I’ve seen, even with lucky random nations. Usually it is only one or two of the super powers who go crazy… rarely have I seen pretty much all of them disappear. In fact, this is the first game that I can ever recall where the Ottomans are gone by the mid 1500s.

But the game is great because whatever nation you play is like a totally different game. Roll around Europe with an elite Army managing your agressive expansion? Brandenburg. Colonize every possible province? Portugal. Blob the world? France. Makes tons of money with a tiny nation? Lubeck. Or go with distinct mechanics and try to survive colonization in the new world, or take over Africa and try to westernize and threaten the European powers. Every game ends up painting the map, but they feel so different as you go.

The only major players I haven’t been able to get into are Japan and China. I did a fun Korea game once, but got really bored eventually. I’ve done a southeast Asia game where I colonized the South Pacific which was interesting as well. And I’ve had a alot of fun in India… but once you kind of conquer any of the Asian areas, you’re left with weak nations to war with. Europe always has something going on, even as you’re crushing it under your boot.

(Note, I haven’t played an Asian nation in awhile, so recent expansions may have changed the experience)

Same here! Sounds like 1.2 is getting real close, by the way.