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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Spice and Wolf 2

by on August 7, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The second book of Spice and Wolf is also the second half of the first season/cour of the original anime adaptation (I haven’t seen the recent one yet), and again that follows this pretty closely.

The central plot once again centers around medieval monetary shenanigans. Instead of money changing, our duo gets into gold smuggling. In essence, this is a “caper” story, though it’s not allowed to really operate as such, and the style and mood stay rooted in Lawrence’s merchant ethos and financial worries.

And utter financial ruin is the motivation here. A good deal goes very sour, a merchant house is on the verge of ruin, and may well take Lawrence with them.

Meanwhile, we get more elaboration, rather than change or progress on the relationship between Lawrence and Horo. For reading, start at the start, not here, but if you’ve seen either anime series, I’m sure everything will be familiar enough to be able to drop in and see Norah.

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The Long Land

by on August 3, 2025 at 5:12 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Last year, Mark and I got The Little Land from Compass’ Company Scale System. It’s an offshoot of MMP’s Grand Tactical Series, and we’ve been wanting to see how it compares, though the initial Pacific island fighting titles don’t appeal to either of us. So, after our game of Rebel Fury, we got to trying it out. Each title had it’s own unique rulebook, but there is now a proper series rulebook, which we used as the primary rules reference. There’s only a handful of scenarios, and the first one looked a little too tiny, so we went for scenario 2, “The Little Land”. (This may have been a mistake.) I took the Soviets, who are conducting an amphibious invasion just south of Novorossiysk. This was intended as a diversionary attack, but when the main one stalled the beachhead here gained importance, and there’s two waves of reinforcements coming ashore over the next couple of days.

There’s one German infantry company at first (plus three Romanian cavalry companies), plus five immobile gun companies, two of which are good indirect fire batteries (there’s no eligible transport for them). And after the first day, Kampfgruppe Busche comes in with some much needed infantry and some more support (with transport). Additionally, neither side has any HQs or leaders to start with, so there can be no second actions, and the available support weapons are distributed at the start (never to be reassigned short of breakage).

The first action of the game (by special rule) is the just-landed 83rd Infantry battalion, which mostly works off the suppression markers from landing. Since those affect an entire hex, you can have one unit in a stack rally and then the rest maneuver. Also, the unit has a hero included, who doesn’t do anything. Except automatically remove every bad status marker in the hex as soon as he activates, so his stack doesn’t even need to rally. This let me get into the Fish Cannery, and up close to the various Romanian units.


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The Prize

by on July 30, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

I never got to see all of it, but the 1992 PBS miniseries on The Prize was very good, and was part of what launched this book to superstar status. That, and coming out right after the First Gulf War didn’t hurt at all.

In fact, a little too close to the war. The end of the miniseries actually a very good section on fighting all the oil well fires Saddam Hussein left behind when forced out of Kuwait. The book talks about the destruction, but doesn’t actually get to the recovery effort. I get the idea that largely happened between the writing of the book and the production of the series.

What we do get is a history of big companies and bigger personalities from about 1846 to the Gulf War. As you might expect, this history breaks into several sections, and Yergin does a good job of presentation of them. Thanks to touching on other subjects of long fascination and study, his five chapters on World War II were something of a highlight, especially since he takes a long hard look at Germany and Japan’s pre-war maneuvering around something that had already been made abundantly clear was essential. Particularly interesting was the Roosevelt administration’s internal struggles over when and if to subject Japan to an embargo. Naturally, as with anything with this much infighting, the eventual answer is not what you’d expect. Oil wasn’t embargoed, but all Japanese assets in the US were frozen, and they had to apply to the government for concessions to be allowed to use their own money (after stating what it would be used for). Since the man in charge of letting the concessions was a big proponent of an embargo, he didn’t let them use their assets for anything.

The chapters on the ’50s and ’60s are more laying the groundwork for the part on the ’70s, which of course is one of the big centerpieces of the book. After WWII there is a continual glut of oil on the market. Oil (gasoline) consumption is shooting up, and everyone’s afraid of existing, and necessarily finite, production fields running out, but exploration for new oil fields keeps finding more faster than demand can go up. Everyone (especially new Middle Eastern countries) want in on the money to be made producing something everyone wants, so supply stays high, and the various producers are fighting to provide the best deal.

This eventually changes; OPEC isn’t any better at controlling production when formed, but eventually agreement comes together, and then Arab-Israeli Wars provide the will. Also, the glut has come to an end. Enough oil is still being produced, but just barely, and the various threats to supply have an immense effect. Supply and demand being what it is, this provides incentive for further exploration and production, and Alaska and North Sea oil prevent the Iran-Iraq War from derailing global supply security again.

While Yergin does provide some good numbers as he goes, I really wish he’d sprinkled a few charts and graphs around, especially for this part. Being given a number at one point, and then another a chapter or two later, and knowing that yes, they are different, isn’t enough. I’d like to see some more compiled statistics as we go for where oil was coming from at certain times, where it was going, and how long reserves were expected to last. Similarly, the wild swings in oil supply and prices in this period drove a lot of inflation, and I’d have appreciated it if he went into that a bit more. I can’t really blame him for not doing so, 900 pages is big enough, and it’s getting further from his field, but I would like to see some analysis on how all this interacts.

Back on continuing themes, I should note that Yergin is decidedly pro-big business. This generally only has a distant effect on his narrative, but while he mentions the conservation and ecological movements, and how they curtailed demand during the ’70s, he never does talk about the ecological effects of emissions, or even drilling, at all. He does talk about the switch over of power generation from coal to oil, and the fact that helped pollution levels, but gives no details. (And the balance of energy sources at various times is another set of charts I’d like to see.)

More noticeably, Yergin casts a distinctly jaundiced eye on the late Nineteenth Century Progressive movement. Standard Oil is something of a flawed hero in his telling, and Progressivism a nearly incomprehensible movement that tore it apart as a byproduct. Certainly, he makes no effort to understand it.

But, this is a big important book both because of and in spite of its unstated viewpoint. And adding in the bits I’d like to see would make it a better history, but detract from its appeal to a broader audience, and it is more than good enough to deserve that audience.

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Dungeons & Sorcery Spells 16

by on July 26, 2025 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

And now for the sixteenth set of Dungeons & Sorcery spells. I finally get around to presenting the (long) writeups for Polymorph Other and Polymorph Self.

Emotion (SC)
Enchantment, Somatic, Verbal, Area (Fixed)
108 points
Casting Time: 4 seconds
Casting Roll: Innate Attack (Gaze) to aim
Range: 100 yards
Duration: 1 minute

The caster attempts to inspire one emotion in everyone in a 4-yard radius of the point he aimed at (see Scatter, B414, on a miss). The Sway Emotions skill (B192) has guidelines on what is possible, and in general reactions to this should be role-played.

However, there are mechanical benefits, which are also up to the GM’s discretion to apply. Every person in the area of effect rolls a Quick Contest of IQ (plus caster’s Talent), with victory exempting them from the effects of the spell, though they will still feel the emotion, just not at a level where it affects/controls actions. (A character can ‘choose not to resist’ a helpful emotion from a trusted caster, at which point, assume a “failure” of 3.)

Despite the first paragraph, there are mechanical benefits and penalties to being under the sway of this spell. The MoF of the Quick Contest is a die roll modifier to all rolls touching that emotion for the next minute. Notably, “courage” and “fear” will generate bonuses or penalties to Fright Checks within that time. Similar conditions can apply to many Reaction Rolls (e.g., an inexperienced hireling told to advance on the scary-looking monster may need a Reaction Roll to follow orders; proper use of emotion could help with this). This spell will never cause a Fright Check or similar, though it might make what was an “assumed” good or bad Reaction Roll into one that is actually rolled and modified.

Mind Control (Area Effect, 4 yd., +150%; Emotion Control, –50%; Independent, +70%; Requires Gestures, –10%; Requires Magic Words, –10%; Sorcery, –15%; Takes Extra Time, x4, –20%) [2.15×50] Note: I’m adding the modifiers to Emotion Control to give it some extra punch, and separate it from the cinematic enthrallment skill. Consider it a house rule.
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