Golden Expansion

by on August 11, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

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.

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Reform and Custom

by on April 11, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fourteenth 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

The next major expansion for Europa Universalis IV reworked governments, and also acted as an immersion pack around India. Dharma was announced on May 19, 2018, and was released with patch 1.26 on September 6. Clean-up patch 1.27 was released on October 1st, and rebalanced a lot of items as well as adding new mission trees.

Reforms

The big feature for the patch and expansion was a rework of government types. This was one of the systems still largely the same as in EU III; there are monarchic, republic, and theocratic governments, and new, largely better, government forms within those types become available throughout the game. There’s also a set of tribal governments for more nomadic societies that can feed into the first three forms if they start settling down enough.

But EU IV’s expansions started adding “unique” government types for a lot of major countries. Generally, you can’t trade into or out of these types, so those countries ignore the entire government system of the game, and start with bonuses equivalent to a fairly late-game type, and have extra mechanics. This meant that nearly every expansion made a base long-term mechanic less important, and something needed to be done. (By my count, there were twenty-one different unique government types at this point.)

The new system boils everything back down to the main three types again (plus tribal and native—the latter only used with Conquest of Paradise), and you pass reforms during the game. These add new bonuses or abilities, and the unique government types are now just reforms only available to certain countries (and with the appropriate expansion). These are grouped into tiers (five to thirteen of them depending on the base government type), and you can only have one reform per tier, and need to go through them in order, though you can go back and change the reform of an earlier tier. Once every level of reform has been applied, you can then shift into a different government form, which is how tribal governments settle down in the new system.

Generally, a nation gets 10 reform progress points a year (modified by the average autonomy in the nation, as well as other influences), and a reform costs 60 plus 40 times the tier number (i.e., 100, 140, 180…), with changing an old one costing 50 points (or if you no longer qualify for a reform you took—say, because you changed religions—you can switch for free). Generally speaking, there are two to five different reforms available at each tier, with additional ones (mostly level 1 reforms replacing the old unique governments) tied to culture or specific countries.

At first, all this was only available with the expansion, but it was incorporated into the base game as of patch 1.30. Frankly, this was way too important to ever be an expansion-only feature. Changing the old government types cost a nasty hit in stability, which made switching something to avoid, but here it is a much more useful secondary system, and doesn’t lock you out just because you’re playing as a country an expansion has played with.

India

Outside the new governments, the focus of the patch was India. As usual, this meant splitting off more provinces (more than 100 were added), and adding new nations to the area.

The coast of southern India was split up more specifically to allow easier access to European footholds there, from more nations. In the north-east, Gurjat was broken up into a number of smaller countries (it represented a host of small tribal principalities), vassalized to Orissa, giving them access to a number of allied one-province-minor countries in its wars. The trade network was also redone so that Europe could pull value out towards the west easier.

Similarly, Burma was further detailed, getting a new inland trade node, and six new at-start countries. Two new wastelands were set up around Tibet to control access around that area.

Of course the expansion also comes with twelve different unique mission trees (introduced last time with Rule Britannia), while the generic (and free) Indian and Tibetan mission trees were reworked. The patch also included four new unique Russian mission trees for those who have Third Rome.

Policies

National policies had been introduced back in patch 1.6, but while there were some good bonuses to be had (and some not-so-good ones), they cost one monarch point per month to be active, so I imagine I was not the only one to avoid using them. Also, they were hidden away in the interface, and easy to miss.

Now they got a better display as part of the tab that decisions were moved to in the previous expansion, and the mechanics overhauled. Before, you could have any set of up to five policies active; now you can have up to three from any particular category (admin, diplomacy, military—based on what kind of points they cost), and therefore up to nine active.

However, the first policy in each category is now free, and only the second and third ones will cost points. However, Dharma includes a few options to upgrade this. With the expansion, Holy Roman traditions include +1 possible policy per type (allowing twelve total, but this does require being the HRE, and not just the emperor), four late-game government reforms each allow an extra policy, and there’s six reforms and a number of traditions that increase the number of free policies. Without Dharma, these all default to other bonuses.

This all came with an extensive rework of the bonuses given by policies, and is a nice rework of the system. Being able to get some for free makes it open for anyone, and the new interface reminds you they exist.

Charter Bus

The trade company concept from Wealth of Nations was brushed up for the expansion. First off, you can ‘charter’ a trade company, with a new diplomatic action to buy a province from another country in a trade region. Cost depends on development (so, poor areas are cheaper), and the colonial range of the purchaser compared to actual distance (this means that this gets cheaper later in the game as colonial ranges increase). Otherwise, they seem to be the same as before, with all provinces in a region that has a trade company active, but is not part of it, getting a boost to their goods production, which will give a nice increase to their income.

Additionally, trade gets a bit more dynamic with Dharma. Many provinces have bonuses to trade, giving the country that owns them more trade power in their trade node. These were reorganized into three explicit tiers or levels, with an increasing variety of other bonuses (including development and institution spread) to their owners. Without Dharma, these levels are fixed, but with it, they will drop one level (to a minimum of 1) each time they change hands, but can also be boosted by spending (a lot of) money.

The expansion also adds a new type of diplomatic insult, which costs prestige, but makes all enemies of the target like you better, in addition to worsening relations with the target. Also, the messages from the action have actual insults in them instead of a very generic notification.

An interesting expansion feature is that you can now assign colonists to existing province, in an effort to increase development there. You still have to pay the equivalent of the colonial cost, and its pure random chance (modified by all the normal development cost modifiers), but a country that gets some colonists… and then runs of of places to colonize now has something to do with them, instead of just regretting past choices (or starting over with an all-new idea set).

Poland

The patch cycle for Dharma included a second major patch to round up old and new bugs, and spend some time further detailing Poland.

This added new event chains, a new unique governments for Venice and the Mongol Empire (which was a new formable nation; it takes a lot of work to get at it), a couple new reforms for Indian governments, and four new mission trees.

The two Romanian nations (Wallachia and Moldavia) got map updates, and one of the mission trees, focused on building a coalition against the Ottomans.

Conclusion

Along with everything else, patch 1.26 moved estates from The Cossacks to the main game. They would get a more serious rework in the future (though as of this patch they no longer demand a share of the land you conquer, making them much more ignorable for a new player), but right now the main thing is Dharma included a fair number of extra estates for Indian countries.

With government reforms as part of the expansion, I’d rate this a ‘must get’, because the change was so desperately needed. Now that it is deservedly in the main game, the main general content is the bonuses to policies, which is a good feature, though still a mid- to late-game one. Similarly, using colonists for development is largely a late-game feature (but an interesting one), though if Expansion Ideas look good other than an initial colonist you won’t use, it could be handy early on. Similarly, the revised trade centers are interesting, though I don’t generally play the trade game enough to immediately notice it.

If you don’t have Wealth of Nations, this will give you charter trade companies, which is good for those seeking to see more European influence in Asia. And of course, the extra mission trees for India should be a big draw for anyone interested in playing in the area. India is actually a fairly interesting area to deal with and has its own mix of powers to navigate, and should be tried out by anyone who plays plenty of the game.

As ever, the biggest part for me is the free patch map changes, and I always appreciate the extra historicity they provide with finer detail and lots of new countries. 1.27 also tightened up institutions a bit (most notably, global trade was slowed down from some buildings having a double bonus), which was needed, as the initial version was a bit too easy to deal with.

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Europa Rule the Waves

by on January 21, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the thirteenth 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

The next expansion for Europa Universalis IV after dealing with the Near East was another immersion pack, this time focusing on the British Isles and surrounds—an area that had already gotten attention, such as the special British government type, in Common Sense. This drew some, deserved, ire from fans who had been hoping for something else, though Paradox certainly found things to do here. Rule Britannia was announced on February 6, 2018 released alongside patch 1.25 on March 20, 2018.

Missions

Missions had originally shown up in EU III, where they were a fairly limited system to give players an immediate goal they could work towards. In IV this had been improved by giving a choice of three missions instead of just randomly assigning one. As of this patch, this was scrapped for a new system.

Missions moved to a new separate tab in the country interface. This graphically shows the various missions available, and how they relate to one another. These relationships generally existed in the old system, but were hidden away, so the player could not see if there were more missions that might open up from accomplishing something, and what the conditions for them were. Decisions now had a tab to themselves, though in 1.26 the tab would also get an interface for policies (which had been introduced in patch 1.6, and were underserved at this point).

There’s a set of three chains of five missions each that a country will get if it doesn’t qualify for anything else, and of course a lot of missions based on particular countries, as well as regional missions, unlocked by the position of a nation’s capital.

Most of the expansions after this point have added further specific missions, but some earlier expansions got them too. Coptic nations get five missions with Rights of Man, and the smaller Russian nations (i.e., not Muskovy and Novgorod, which get their own sets) get ten unique missions with Third Rome. Rule Britannia itself of course has missions for England/Britain, as well as Scotland, and the various Irish countries, with the former two still having some unique missions without the expansion.

This resembles the focus trees from Hearts of Iron IV, though there’s still plenty of differences. The focus trees are generally something you’re always working with, whereas the missions may have to wait a while before you can get to some. For instance, one of England’s first missions is “The War of the Roses”, which requires either completing that disaster, or getting to the Age of Reformation. Which brings up the greatest weakness of the system. While multiple missions might depend on completing an earlier one, there’s no place where completing one locks out an alternate choice, nor is there any way to fail a mission (which might lead to other choices going in a different direction).

New Lands

The main focus of the patch was of course a rework of Northern Europe. Namely, Ireland was expanded to thirteen provinces, each of which start as a one-province minor (except for the English Pale, which is a province). Scotland was reworked a bit, and the Kingdom of the Isles split off. The Low Countries were also reworked into a larger number of provinces, with good development levels to showcase what was one of the richest areas of Europe at the time.

Naval Doctrine

https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8642652/europa-universalis-iv-rule-britanniaThe big ‘general purpose’ addition of the expansion is the ability to set a naval doctrine for a permanent bonus. Any country whose naval force limit is above a minimal level (20), can do this.

Surprisingly, this takes money, not diplomatic power, to do, and is not cheap. It’s far from expensive, and as mentioned is permanent, though you can spend money again to change the bonus.

There are four common doctrines, which boost naval maintenance, galleys, trade power, or the chance of capturing ships in combat. There is also a selection of twenty-six optional ones (plus a Mamluk set which can replace the main four) which will take up the fifth slot. It seems like anyone will probably qualify for one of them, though there’s no “default”, so it may be possible to only qualify for the main four.

It’s a neat idea, but seems a little static. It won’t be hard to afford a bonus once and then ignore it for the rest of the game, which I imagine happens fairly often.

Anglicanism

The expansion includes a new Christian religion: Anglican. This is historically the English church as it evolved under Elizabeth I, but it is available to any country in the British culture group.

The religion grants discounts to development and technology, making it handy right there. It also uses the church power mechanic seen in other Christian religions, which is then used to buy a number of instant bonuses (instead of permanent aspects and the like). This includes the ability (with Rights of Man) to divorce the current consort for a bonus in monarch points, and to gain a consort, with a large boost to the odds of getting an heir.

The more “regular” bonuses are quite varied and can help international relations (…with other non-Catholic Christians) as well as various domestic stats. These all generally cost the standard 100 points, but there’s a good military bonus for 200, and a 200-point purchase to boost stability.

There are two problems: The event to convert to Anglicanism happens once, and even after that, you generally can’t convert to it manually. So if it passes you by for one of the other countries in the area, you’re probably stuck. The event does have an option to create a Center of Reformation for Angicanism, but that’s not the historical option, so it is unlikely from an AI player. The other trouble is that this isn’t in the timeline at all, so the only way to get it is through the event in play; you can never start with it.

Innovations

A surprising new feature with the patch is an innovation rating. Like many new features, it’s 0-100 track, but it is more complicated and nuanced than many more recent ones.

Getting a technology either first, or just after anyone else, grants a +4 bonus, and +2 for an idea (which is possibly a bit easier, as there’s a larger number of idea groups to pick from). However, the main shifts will be a +0.01/month from being ahead of time in at least one technology (as long as your ruler isn’t hopeless in all three, that can be done), or -0.03/month from being behind your neighbors.

So, most of the time, most nations should be able to get the slow increase from being ahead on something. The benefit is a reduction to all monarch power costs. There’s also a secondary benefit of a reduction to army and naval tradition decay. These cap at a fairly modest 10% and -1%, but over the course of the game, that can certainly add up.

To a certain extent, this is a ‘rich get richer’ effect, as the better-positioned nations will have a much easier time gaining some innovation than others (especially the great powers from Rights of Man, who are more likely to get the bonus monarch power from high power projection). Nations disadvantaged by the institutions will have a rough time, meaning this is an extra hindrance on them. I’d complain, but I already suspected that institutions are overall not as rough on many nations as they should be.

Industrialism

A surprising addition for the expansion is a new trade good: coal. Certain provinces can change from their normal goods to coal late in the game. These provinces are predetermined, with four of them (out of about 50) in England (plus one in Scotland). This means England is likely to get the trade bonus for the commodity, which is a bonus to goods production.

Coal has a very good trade value, and instead of building a manufactory in its province, it can get a furnace. You would expect that to just be another form of manufactory (+1 unit of trade good produced), but instead grants a global +5% goods production.

None of this happens without the Enlightenment institution, so it is restricted to post-1700. It’s meant to be on the same order of value as gold provinces, but for the late game. It’s a clever idea, and Britain certainly was going over to coal use during the later Eighteenth Century, but it seems a bit out of place, and there’s not a lot of need for more money in the late game.

Conclusion

I can see why people would complain about an expansion not having anything of general interest in it. But I disagree. The entire point of these expansions, and what makes them work, is that they are optional. They don’t have to have something for everyone.

And the effort to have general interest here falls a bit flat. I think having a naval mechanic like the army professionalism introduced in Cradle of Civilization would be a neat idea, but the single-bonus system here isn’t as interesting. Of course, naval matters are often limited enough to probably not deserve a more wide-ranging mechanic, but I still feel this is a missed opportunity. Innovation and Industrialism are better (especially the former), but it is layering on yet another complicated mechanic, and only recommended for someone fairly deep in the game.… who are also the people complaining, so, good audience targeting.

And I’m a bit mixed on missions. In general, I like idea, but would like to see even more flexibility than we have. Maybe a true rework of the concept in EU V would be worthwhile. At any rate, they are now the primary “draw” for any regional expansions, and will help make them worthwhile. And without that, there’s still enough different mission trees in the base game to make it work.

As for this expansion. Well, if you’re interested in playing in the British Isles, get it, naturally. Otherwise, I think the innovativeness rating is interesting, but not enough for a purchase, and the other features are good, but not worth a purchase either.

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Immersive Cradle

by on August 26, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the twelfth 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

The second regional “immersion pack” for Europa Universalis IV was announced on October 13, 2017, and released a month-and-a-half later with patch 1.23 on November 16. Cradle of Civilization concentrated on the Middle East, with a number of new features for governments in the region. Follow-up patch 1.24 was released on December 12th, focused on optimization.

Previously On

The most noticeable free update was a new startup screen. Similar to the one introduced to Crusader Kings II in patch 2.4 back in 2015, it has four tabs, the first of which describes recent history and what is going on in the area. At this point, 29 countries had individual histories, with everything else getting regional ones, and they’ve only added to this with every pretty much every major patch since.

The other three tabs talk about your religion and government, and features of the general area you are in. Any features particular to expansions you have will be pointed out with that expansion’s icon in the text (features from expansions you don’t have will not be mentioned).

This is a great addition for new players, and frankly can be very helpful for anyone when starting in an unfamiliar area. For example, the situation in the Timurid empire (mentioned below) is nicely spelled out, letting you know what’s coming.

Reworks

The map was refreshed in a number of places. One of the most obvious was the Arabian peninsula, where Yemen was split up into a number of competing states, as there were multiple claims to power and civil wars in the area in 1444, with Yemen itself still directly controlling a few provinces, but it is also formable by the other states in the region. The rest of the area got much the same treatment, especially the Hejaz.

Egypt was reworked into much better looking provinces along the Nile, while a couple new countries were added to Syria to represent some of the tribal confederations (the same was done in Arabia). Armenia was made a new formable nation south of the Caucasus, and Georgia is now formable (as well as historically existing in 1444, but now split up a bit).

The Timurids are split up into a central (still powerful) state, and a number of vassals, representing the various governors. It’s got modifiers to keep it stable, until Shah Rukh dies (which historically happened in 1446), when civil wars and breakaways become likely.

The Ottomans had already been detailed in Rights of Man, but now other Turkish countries can potentially claim their title of Sultan of Rûm and take over the Ottoman mechanics introduced in that expansion. Additionally, that government type gains the ability to assign pashas to states, which increases autonomy, but reduces costs.

Islam had started out with an extra mechanic of the type that was later instituted in various expansions for other religions. Piety measures a scale from mysticism on one end to legalism on the other. This was brushed up for the patch, with rewritten events, and then new abilities that can be triggered with the expansion. In addition, the expansion gives each Islamic country gets a school of law, which grants an extra bonus trait, but also affects diplomatic relations depending on how two countries’ schools get along (-25 relations if they hate each other…).

A last notable change of the patch was the addition of five new trade goods. Gems, glass, incense, livestock, and paper were all added to the trade network. They have no real outstanding qualities, but of course provide their own unique bonuses for controlling trade or production of these new commodities.

Military Reform

The expansion introduced two new mechanics for the military, both dealing with the transition to highly-drilled professional armies in the period.

Drill is tracked on every regiment separately, and high drill increases damage done and decreases damage received, so a force with high drill will have a substantial advantage against a force with no drill.

The problem is that drill naturally trends downwards, and replacing losses naturally sucks all the drill out (the replacements are considered completely undrilled). The only way to increase drill values is to… drill your armies. This requires the army have a leader, and reduces morale to low levels, and forces that army to full maintenance costs, meaning that a poor country won’t be able to drill often or effectively.

The good news is that drilling has a chance of increasing the leader’s abilities, and increases army professionalism, the other new mechanic. Professionalism makes mercenaries less desirable, as recruiting them is the main way to make that value go down.

Professionalism is another 0-100 meter, and every twenty points grants a new ability, such as building supply depots, which raises supply limits and lets you reinforce in captured territory as if it were the home country. At the same time there’s scaling bonuses to damage dealt and siege ability.

Overall, while it’s “just another mechanic”, it’s a fairly natural one, and naturally lines player motivations up with historical trends, which is really nice to see. However, the passive professionalism bonuses are a bit small to my thinking, while the drill does much more heavy lifting in combat. In general this is all fine, but I am concerned that armies lose too much drill after combat from replacing losses. The real problem is there’s no counteracting veterancy caused by having been through a battle.

Mamluks and Tribes

Part of the rework of the Middle East was the introduction of two new government types. The Aq Qoyunlu and Qara Qoyunlu (along with some smaller Arabian countries) are tribal federations, who get bonuses to conquering territory with a lower cost to take it in a peace, and less separatism once they have it.

All of this was in the patch, with the expansion adding the ability to gain tribal allegiance. (I believe this was later added into the base game.) Tribal allegiance is another 0-100 meter that naturally empties over time, but winning battles and humiliating countries in wars can drive it up fast, and then used to buy bonuses, much like principalities and veche in Third Rome. In this case, they can get a good general, a bonus to cavalry, or get six free cavalry units (which will need maintenance, but you don’t pay to hire them).

The Mamluks got the unique Mamluk Sultanate. While they have the normal legitimacy mechanic for monarchies, they do not use the normal rules with heirs and consorts. Instead, they always choose an heir when the current sultan dies, with one choice having high legitimacy, and having Circassian culture. The other choices will have a culture from within the sultanate, but their initial legitimacy will be quite low (and if you have spare military power, the strengthen government action can help with that…).

The sultan’s ratings for administration, diplomacy, and military also power government abilities of the same style that seen in the new Russian governments of Third Rome, but using them largely depends of having provinces of the same culture as the sultan, so the Circassian choice is safe (high legitimacy), but doesn’t have access to all the special abilities (as Circassia is outside the Mamluk’s initial borders).

Back East

Patch 1.24 added a fair amount of detail to the Philippines, with three new nations in the north, and another four in the south. There’s a mix of religions in play, and each region has their own idea groups. About half the area is occupied now, still allowing colonization to happen, but giving some of the more organized parts their due.

Also, the Oda clan was added to Japan, with their own idea group. Nobunaga doesn’t show up until 1551, but they get some good warlord-oriented ideas, starting with better infantry, featuring extra pips for leaders in shock, fire, and siege, and a bonus to fire damage.

Conclusion

First off, I am always happy to see good map reworks that put in more historical nuance. And both patches did a very good job at that. I also think the new introduction screens are well done and overdue. The new trade items are nice (especially with the expanding number of provinces), but all the new events and nations are the bulk of the patch and very nicely done.

The main general expansion feature is army professionalism and drill. I’m a little mixed on that. It does nicely align player motivations with what they’re representing, which is great. But I think it falls down a bit as there should be some way for battle experience to factor into the mix (which would also keep mercenaries from never being any better than non-drilled troops, even though, as mercenaries, they were largely better experienced than early armies). Thankfully, it’s not a really big complication, though ignoring it may leave your military outclassed in the late game, when dealing with armies with high professionalism and high drill.

The religious and government mechanics are to be expected… and frankly just don’t feel that special. There’s too many special government types, and the Mamluks borrow a mechanic I didn’t care for from Third Rome. The tribal federations seem to be well done, but I don’t have as much experience with them.

So… at the very least I’m happy to have this to support all the non-expansion work that was done. I also do like the drill and professionalism mechanic, despite some reservations. But despite the low (especially on sale) price, I don’t think it can carry the expansion by itself. That just leaves completionism for religious and government mechanics. I’d more get it for the tribal federations in the Syria region than for the Mamluks, though even they get interesting decisions. If you aren’t playing in that part of the world… I’d give this a pass, despite army reform.

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First Moscow

by on April 14, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the eleventh 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

After a full expansion with a regional focus, Europa Universalis IV development focused on a number of small “immersion packs” that focus on flavor elements for certain regions. These tend to be priced at $10 instead of the usual $15 to $20 for a full expansion. Third Rome, the first of these, was announced on May 12, 2017, and came out with patch 1.22 on June 14.

Governments

Three new unique government types came with the patch. The first is the Russian principality, which seven states start with (most notably Muscovy), which get tax and unrest bonuses.

Meanwhile, Novgorod and Pskov are veche republics, which are variant merchant republics. They get an extra merchant, and if Res Publica is in use, they get to build trade posts and have a faction system like a merchant republic. Instead of getting caravan power (inland trade power), they cause extra production in provinces they don’t own, but have a lot of trade power in (which directly increases revenue for the other countries, but indirectly increases it for the veche as they’ll get the increased trade value caused by the production).

Any of these that manage to form Russia automatically switch to a tsardom, which has a strong number of bonuses, including increased manpower, absolutism, and decreased autonomy (this caused complaints, and great veche republic was created as the republic version of tsardom later), and with the expansion it gets the ability to claim an entire area. It costs more from a spy network, but generally less than claiming the provinces separately, so Russia is uniquely able to spread claims faster than anyone else. The former two are locked as duchies, while tsardom is automatically an empire. That kind of goes against the idea of how the ranks should work in Common Sense, but it does help if you don’t have that expansion.

Of course, like just about all other unique government forms, you can’t voluntarily change from these, though the veche can fall to a despotic monarchy/republican dictatorship like a merchant republic.

Additionally, with the expansion, three special abilities are granted to all of these countries (one per type of monarch point). A special form of power is collected for each, based on the current ruler’s abilities, and when it reaches 100, the appropriate ability can be activated. Admin reduces autonomy in all provinces, diplomatic reduces the progress of all rebellions (that can be handy…), and the military recruits streltsy units.

These are a new unit category that costs no money, manpower, or time to recruit, but afterward they act the same as anything else, so they cost the normal maintenance and manpower to refresh. However, recruiting them grants a temporary combat bonus that only applies to them, and can be refreshed by recruiting more in the future (streltsy units have a gray background). However, using them also increases stability costs.

The government types are nice, but I think the abilities are mechanically weak. There’s no variation in the growth of their meters, and there’s only one choice with each of them: hit the button or don’t hit the button (to save it for a more opportune moment). It doesn’t really cost anything else, so the stability cost of streltsy is the only trade-off in the entire set.

Orthodoxy

Naturally, Orthodox Christianity got new mechanics for the expansion. Orthodox countries have a new state-level ability, consecrate metropolitan. This adds to the maintenance cost of the state, but causes it to recover from devastation faster, and adds to patriarch authority.

Patriarch authority is another religious 0-100 meter, and grants missionary strength, manpower, and reduces unrest as it goes up. This actually already existed, but outside of creating new metropolitan seats, it tends to be fairly static (there are events to affect it, which is all there was previously, and still without the expansion), and consecrating a new metropolitan only boosts it by 5. So it takes a bit of work, and a large amount of territory to get it very high.

Also, authority can be used to commission icons. This is like the temporary bonuses in other religions, but of course consumes a currency that is generally in short supply. The bonuses last two decades, and each icon provides two (related) bonuses, so they tend to be fairly strong.

Both the icons and the metropolitans have events that are possible while those are active. The vast bulk of icon events are positive, so that’s another benefit.

Ideas

All the culturally-Russian countries had either a unique idea and tradition set, or used a general set just for them already. But the Russian set itself was changed so the second idea is Siberian frontier.

Normally, it just auto-discovers empty terra incognita provinces in the area, but with the expansion you can also establish a form of colony that will settle an empty Siberian province. Unlike a normal colony, it costs no maintenance, and won’t be attacked by the locals. They have good base rate of growth, but since there’s no colonist to help them along (without going for colonist ideas), they will be a bit slow to grow into cities, and they get no help from the usual diplomatic tech bonuses to colonies. This lets Russia colonize out to the Pacific at a cost of 20 diplomatic power per province without having to take Expansion or Exploration ideas just to get an actual colonist to do it that way, which is a big improvement.

Formerly, Muscovy and Russia shared the same idea set, but now Muskovy’s are separate (with an option to keep or change when forming Russia), mostly concentrating on small military bonuses, though one of the initial traditions is +10% shock damage, which is not small at the start of the game.

Conclusion

Naturally, all this came with a map rework of the area, which allowed a couple of one-province minors to become two or three provinces. Additionally, Rostov and Beloozero were split off into vassals of Muskovy at game start (giving them the maximum number of relations already in vassals; be careful).

That part is certainly well done and always appreciated, and the new government types are nice; I certainly like the idea of a variant merchant republic. The expansion bonuses are a bit of a mix for me, as I feel too much of it (which would be any part at all) is too static and devoid of interesting decisions. That said, the new Orthodox mechanics are nice, and the ability of Russia to automatically colonize Siberia is something the game actually needed. It’s certainly an overall benefit, and if you like playing as Muskovy or Novgorod (or the smaller states in the area), it’s worth getting, which is the entire idea.

It does occur to me that they don’t play around that much with Russia’s self-image of being the successor of Rome and Byzantium (referenced in the title Third Rome). Ambitions in that direction are, I believe, already in the missions that can come up, but an event that triggers on the taking of Constantinople by the Ottomans (very likely in most games) would have been a good flavor addition, even if it didn’t do much mechanically.

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