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This is the fifteenth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis IV. See the previous reviews here:
Europa Universalis IV: A Fantastic Point of View
Wealth of Nations: National Trade
Res Publica: A Tradition of the People
Art of War: Reform-Minded Patch
El Dorado: Expansion of Gold
Common Sense: Uncommon Changes
The Cossacks: Cossack Estate
Mare Nostrum: Paradox’s Sea
Rights of Man: Institutions of Man
Mandate of Heaven: Mandated Ages
Third Rome: First Moscow
Cradle of Civilization: Immersive Cradle
Rule Britannia: Europa Rule the Waves
Dharma: Reform and Custom

Europa Universalis IV development continued going back-and-forth between bigger expansions and smaller immersion packs. The third immersion pack focused on Spain and its long-term influence in the New World. Golden Century was announced on November 21, 2018, and was released with patch 1.28 on December 12, with follow-up patch 1.29 released on September 17, 2019.

The Plains in Spain

The Iberian peninsula in EU IV had been need of a rework for some time, looking relatively poor with a few over-large provinces compared with France or the rest of Europe. The new map looks much better, and includes a couple new releasable nations. Northwest Africa also got a solid rework with a denser system of coastal provinces, and a new route/chokepoint through the Atlas Mountains.

Also, much of the Americas got a rework. Around eighty new provinces were added to the historical map of the New World, most of them in Mesoamerica. However, Cuba also got an expanded number of provinces, as well plenty of new provinces around the coasts of Venezuela and Peru. Also around twenty new countries were added, often representing fringe areas that the likes of the Aztecs considered ‘barbarians’, but did play important parts in the politics of the region.

The expansion added pirate republics as a new government type. They generally can form during the game through events. They get a larger naval limit and chance to capture ships (of course), and have factions instead of estates, but have a high maintenance cost on states, which will keep them small. Beyond the obvious Caribbean-based ones, the Barbary Coast, the Far East, and other areas have ones that can form.

Extras

Naturally, a big focus of the expansion is new mission trees. Spain has a new extensive tree which concentrates on the unification of Iberia and the conquest of the new world. Castile actually has mostly the same tree, but more is added on the bottom when forming Spain. Aragon has a tree that focuses on domination of the Mediterranean, but gains the bottom portion of the Spanish tree if it forms Spain.

Portugal got one of the largest mission trees to date, and is focused on recreating Portugal’s exploration around Africa and her overseas empire. There is also a new decision with the patch to flee to Brazil. This is for if Portugal gets into real trouble (as during the Napoleonic Wars), and changes the player’s country to Brazil, with any European holdings as a personal union under it. I can’t imagine it comes up often, but it is a nice touch. (And something similar for Spain’s experience with Napoleon would have been good, if more complicated.)

One-province minor Navarra got a free custom mission tree, and also an event will bring it into a personal union with Aragon. At the start of the game, Aragon’s designated heir is the king of Navarra, so if it’s still independent when Alfonso of Aragon dies, the two will be joined.

Just across the sea, Morocco has a set of missions for the conquest of Africa and a (re-)reconquest of Iberia, and even has a small chain to get involved in the New World. Tunis has a piracy-focused tree, and the patch gave a general Maghrebi tree to everyone in the area.

Patch 1.29 did three things. First, it moved the game to a 64-bit code base (mostly because Mac was dropping 32-bit support, but also, there are plenty of performance upgrades with the switch). Second, a new game launcher was introduced, which all of Paradox’s games got during 2019. While the old launchers all looked similar, they were all individually coded, and the new one is actually on a shared codebase, so improvements and updates can go to all their game launchers.

Third, there was a big update to the far east, including an extensive rework of the mechanics from Mandate of Heaven. With this were new (free) mission trees for the Manchus (and their predecessor the Jurchen), aimed at their historical conquest of China as the Qing dynasty. Mongolia (shared with the other culturally similar powers) gets a tree around restoring the Mongol Empire. And Japan has a much expanded mission tree for the daimyos. Though, only the first few missions can be completed as such, the rest require becoming shogun, and more is available after “forming” Japan.

Society of State

A new state-level interaction was added to Iberian countries with the expansion (akin to the Metropolitans in Third Rome). A region must be fully owned and cored, and turned into a proper state before a holy order can be founded there. These cost monarch points (and there’s a choice for each type of monarch point), and can’t be changed later. However, they provide constant bonuses, and don’t cost anything after the initial price.

One of the effects is +1 development of the appropriate type for every province in the state, so it’s also a cheap way to get more development. The other effects are varied, but are usually reductions in costs, or a bonus to reducing devastation.

At this point, you only get a choice between the three types for your religion (and only Catholics or any flavor of Muslim have holy orders available), but patch 1.35 expanded the list of possible orders for Catholics.

A Barrage of Tithe

Missionaries were re-done for the patch. Technically, they always cost maintenance while active, but if your missionary strength was good enough, you could turn that down to a minimal level, and still generate progress. Now, it’s all linear scaling, and 0 money paid per month is 0 progress, so you have to pay the maintenance to get anywhere. The good news is that you can now send them to non-core provinces and territories—it just costs more (and needs more missionary power to get anywhere).

The expansion added some smaller features, the main one being naval barrage. This is the same idea introduced to sieges in Mandate of Heaven, where if you have artillery at a siege you can pay military power for an automatic breach. Now you can do the same thing from a blockade, if the ships have enough cannons available. The Portuguese have a new naval doctrine with Rule Britannia to make it easier (representing a number of times when their marines overwhelmed forts in Africa).

Also, flagships were added to the expansion. This was presumably borrowed from HoI IV: Man the Guns, then under development, rather than the other way around. This is a single, custom, ship that can be set as any general category, and will have more cannons, morale, and durability. In addition, you can add up to three abilities to it for even better basic stats, or fleet-wide improvements to speed, attrition, etc. They can be very powerful, and generate a fair amount of prestige if defeated; however, they’re very expensive in monthly maintenance.

You can also expel minorities to your colonies. This speeds colony growth by increasing the colonist’s chance of adding population each month, and can add extra development to the colony when finished. You get a choice to expel various cultural and religious minorities, which gets tied to a particular province. The extra development ends up coming out of that province, so it’s not really a great deal. Also, it will not change the culture or religion of the home province; instead you get increased missionary strength and decreased cultural conversion cost for twenty years, so it’s only worth doing if you plan on spending that effort. Finally, Korea got a new tree and events which largely (but not entirely) focused on internal affairs.

Conclusion

There’s a lot of little extras with this expansion. It also comes with (as separate files, but part of the purchase) unit packs that add dozens of models for the countries of the area, and three new pieces of music.

For someone playing in the area, the main attraction should be the mission trees. The new ones are all extensive and worth going over. I don’t care for the expelling minorities feature, though it does make part of the Castilian/Spanish tree much easier, and the holy orders are nice, but limited in scope.

More generally, flagships are the biggest new feature, and will be attractive to any largely seagoing power like England. Naval barrages can be handy, especially in the very early game before artillery is available, but most of the time the regular version from MoH is more convenient, and I recommend that instead, if that’s all you want. I haven’t had pirate nations form, and I can’t really see getting the expansion for that.

Also, treasure fleets from El Dorado, transfer occupation (to a partner in a war) from Art of War, and privateers (from Wealth of Nations, El Dorado, or Mare Nostrum) are made available here, so if you don’t have any of those expansions, you get a couple of extra features. And finally, as an immersion pack, it is fairly cheap, so while on sale it’s very reasonably priced, and I recommend it for your next Iberian game, if not for anything outside of that.