Back in Time

by on May 13, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fifth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything
Rajas of India: My Elephant for a Kingdom

Paradox went even further back in time for Crusader King II’s seventh expansion. Where The Old Gods had pushed the start date nearly 200 years back, Charlemagne’s headline feature was a 769 start date—98 years before TOG’s. Paradox released the expansion on October 14th, 2014, along side patch 2.2.

In the patch, Paradox streamlined the opening interface, so that you are given five general ‘era’ choices (only three of which can be selected without any expansions) instead of the ten bookmarks. Each one has a description of the main features of the era, and a list of possible rulers to play as. There’s a ‘custom game’ button to get at the old interface, and choose rulers other than the given set. It’s a little annoying for an experienced player, but certainly is an improvement for the novice player.

Realm Update

The major work on the patch away from the headline feature and the things it required (new cultures, religions, and the like) focused on more tweaks to how the ream is administered.

Patch 2.1 had added new penalties for having too many holdings in your demesne, and now they added a limit to how many vassals you can have. Like with the demesne limit, going over reduces the taxes and levies you receive from your vassals, and there there is a chance that vassals will just spontaneously become independent upon your death if you’re over the current limit.

This is meant to keep a large realm from just having a bunch counts as direct vassals, so no one has enough power to become a problem. A ruler needs to delegate power to dukes (or even kings in an empire) to keep from having too large a court to manage.

The interesting part was that they let you balance if you wanted a (modestly) larger demesne, or a larger number of vassals. Realm laws were reworked so that centralization gives you more demesne at the cost of your possible pool of vassals, and both that and the other main authority laws have to be unlocked by the Legalism technology.

Regents got a nice tweak, with regents acting more in their own interest, and with their personality, and less as a swap-in replacement for the ruler. Paradox also added the honorary title designated regent, which lets you choose just who will be running things when your incapacitated.

And finally, with the expansion, a powerful ruler can appoint viceroys. These are duke- or king-level governors who administer the title for you (keeping everyone from getting unhappy because you’re keeping all the good titles to yourself) for life. Once the viceroy dies, the title reverts back to you, keeping his family from becoming a permanent power block that may become disloyal. It will make feudal vassals of that rank modestly unhappy, and does require Legalism IV (say, circa 1150) for viceroy kings, and VIII (end game) for duke viceroys.

Tribes

Away from Western Europe and the Middle East, many areas are still not extensively settled, and cities have not grown up. This means the feudal structure of CK II isn’t accurate at all, and the problem got worse as the development team went back in time. So, a fourth basic holding type was added to the game:

Tribes have chiefs, who can become high chiefs and khans, if they hold extensive lands in a tribal government. They provide moderate taxes, and start lightly fortified, but can get good defensive values later in the game, and provide heavy troops. Generally, the tribe is the only holding in the province (some will have a temple as well), and gets an income and levy bonus per empty holding slot in the province. They generally have lots of light infantry, and most improvements (not all) cost prestige instead of money.

Tribes are locked to elective gavelkind inheritance, so that each generation, the titles are split amongst the heirs, with the primary heir being chosen by the nobles of the realm. Instead of the normal crown laws, tribes have tribal organization, which will generally start at ‘minimal’, and acts like the normal crown laws except only unreformed pagans will get unhappy as it progresses to ‘maximum’. A tribe at maximum organization can adopt feudalism or become a merchant republic (through decision).

This converts the ruler’s primary holdings from tribes to castles or cities, and as all the tribal improvements go away, the ruler is left with fairly minimal resources until he can start upgrading. On the other hand, tribal rulers get no vassal levies, but must call their vassals to war as allies (remaining under the vassal’s control). In a stable realm, this generates lots of (light) troops, but they can’t be forced to join, and an unpopular ruler can’t force them to join.

Ibadi

With the patch, Ibadism was moved from a Sunni heresy, to being a separate branch of Islam (following the lead of EU IV: Wealth of Nations, and adding the Kharijites as the Ibadi heresy), and with Sword of Islam it is as playable as the other two branches.

However, while the southeast corner of Arabia maintains an Ibadi population during the entire game, only the 769 start has an available independent ruler (the Emir of Azd Umanid). He has one neighbor of about his power level… and Abbasid Caliph on the other side.

Past the usual tough start of a more minor religion, they aren’t mechanically different from other branches of Islam, beyond their own holy order (with Sons of Abraham) and slightly different holy places.

Zunist

More unexpectedly, Zunism was added to the list of pagan religions. This was a small, not very well documented religion, that may not have been much more than one royal family’s personal beliefs.

It is completely gone in any start after 769 (swallowed up by Shia Islam), so you need both TOG and Charlemagne to play as a Zunist. At that point, three provinces are Zunist, along with the Zunbils and their vassals.

While they share many traits with other pagans, like being able to reform the religion, they are more of a cross between the offensive and defensive subgroups of other pagan religions. They have the same problems with conversion as other pagans, and have the boosted levy size of offensive pagans, but cannot raid, and have the increased defensive attrition of defensive pagans.

The tough-start problems include being adjacent to the Abbassids, though the attrition penalties should help with that, along with mostly being in mountainous terrain. Converting anything to Zunist is very unlikely at the start, but at least you hold one holy site, and a second one is easily available, but the other three range as far away as Cairo.

A Realm of Your Own

Possibly the most immediately interesting feature of the expansion is the ability to create your own kingdoms or empires. This isn’t modding the game, or using the equivalent of the ruler creator, this an in-game function.

Normally, you need to hold a certain amount of land that de jure belongs to a king-level title, and then you can ‘create’ or usurp that title. With the expansion, if you have a large enough realm that is split between several different ‘potential’ kingdoms (leaving you unable to claim any one of them), you can still promote yourself to king, and a new title based on your main duke title is created. Similarly, a powerful king can promote himself to emperor without conforming to any of the defined de jure empires.

It’s handy, and especially at the emperor-level can take a lot of pain out of attempts to get at the next higher rung of titles. The custom ones are more costly to create than the normal game-designated ones, which also makes them just appropriate for those who are stuck with powerful neighbors, or convenient allies, where the pursuit of power would otherwise take them.

Story Missions

Charlemagne’s rise to greatness was not at all inevitable, especially in 769, shortly after becoming effectively a co-equal king with his brother. This is a bit forced with the addition of story missions.

This is potentially a neat idea, that gives a lot of the history involved, and lets certain characters show up when/where needed. However, they’ve never been instituted for any subjects other than Charlemagne’s life, and give something of an ‘acting out history’ feel from EU II. The flexibility of events in CK II has been its strong point, and I think this takes away some of that, and makes playing as Charlemagne less interesting after the first time, even though he’s potentially a very interesting character to play.

Conclusion

Again, as a patch, this is an excellent improvement to the game. The vassal limit strikes me as a bit useless (it’s fairly high normally), though apparently needed for people determined to break the system. But the designated regent is a nice subtle addition, and the new tribal system makes them play very differently, and gives them some nice medium-term goals.

Expansion-wise, not so much. 769 is actually a fairly interesting start date, full of some of the most famous persons of early Medieval Europe. However, the story missions just make things feel a bit artificial, so primary replay interest is away from Charlemagne himself. The custom realms are a big help however, and the primary useful part day-in and day-out, though not really worth an expansion by itself.

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A Tradition of the People

by on April 10, 2020 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the third 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

During development of Wealth of Nations, PDS had mentioned merchant republics as being too small and vulnerable, even though they tended to be fairly small and long-lived in history. So the next project was considered a ‘mini-expansion’ and focused on republics in general. Res Publica was released on July 16th, 2014, alongside patch 1.7 for a minimal $5 (most expansions are $15, and ‘small’ ones are $10).

Getting Ahead in the World

One important patch change was a reverse in direction. Like in previous games, being behind your neighbors (or just other members of your tech group) in technology grants a bonus to your progress. Whereas before it had been a bonus to budgetary investment per country and tech, in EU IV it is a reduction in power cost from the most advanced neighbor you have.

This was initially a 5% (30 power) decrease in cost per level, but in patch 1.6 this was decreased to 2.5%. In patch 1.7, it was changed back to 5%, the maximum possible bonus was increased (though it’s really hard to get past the old limit), and the worst tech group penalties were removed. Various Far Eastern and African groups actually had penalties to power generation, effectively lowering their base 3 power per group, and these were removed to give everyone the same overall power generation, though non-Western countries still pay more for technology.

The idea had been to discourage lagging behind in technology for the cost bonus by reducing that, but now, they rewarded staying on top of technology. Any time the next Administrative or Diplomatic technology would be ‘ahead of time’ (each level has a target year, and it is more expensive before that point), you get a +20% to production or trade efficiency, giving a nice boost to income for keeping up with your studies.

An extra addition to the patch were three new idea groups (one per category). This also meant adding new policies for all the new combinations, and brought the number of choices up to seven per category.

Focus, Pinkie, Focus

The most useful expansion feature isn’t republic related: With the expansion, you gain the ability to set a national focus. This is done from the main Monarch Power display on the government tab. Activating one gives you two extra power points per month in the chosen field, while you gain one less in the other two.

It’s a nice bit of flexibility, and kind of a shame that it’s not in the base game, as there are times when one area is starved for points (especially Administration), while the others are doing well. The cost is that it can only be done every 20 years, but some countries will start focused, and are ready to change or remove focus from the start.

Factions

The idea of the faction system for Ming China from EU III: Divine Wind had been retained, but the principles changed a bunch. There were still three factions, and now they were tied directly to the three power types of the government. However, factions no longer prevented you from being able to do things. Instead, they each give two bonuses and one penalty.

Unlike before, faction influence isn’t subject to large shifts due to ruler ability and domestic policies (which no longer exist), but the military faction gains influence from army tradition, and the diplomatic faction gains influence from navy tradition, while the administrative faction gains influence from stability. In addition, you can spend monarch power to give influence to a particular faction.

Patch 1.7 reworked this so that factions are associated with particular government types (for modding purposes), and added factions to merchant republics. These are of course different from China’s factions, granting bonuses around goods, and trade instead of extra advisors and diplomatic reputation.

Republics

As briefly mentioned in the main review, republics have republican tradition. This is a measure of confidence in the government, and replaces legitimacy for monarchies. It is a more limited mechanic, with fewer things affecting it (though there are a number of events that directly touch it), and only a couple things that it affects.

The primary effect is that not being at full legitimacy increases stability cost. High tradition also reduces overall revolt risk, with the same maximum of legitimacy (-2%), but at minimum tradition, there is only an elimination of that bonus, instead of it swinging all the way to the +2% penalty that a monarchy has to deal with.

Republics generally elect (player choice) a new president every four years, with the base stats being one point each in two categories, and four in the one that he focuses in. Re-electing the previous president boosts him by +1 in each category (e.g., becomes 5/2/2 depending on his initial focus), but reduces tradition by 10. Tradition generally increases by +1 per year, so constantly increasing the stats of one president leads to an erosion of six points per election.…

There are, of course, events that give a choice between tradition, and losing money and the like, so the path of a stable democracy can be rocky. On the other hand, there can be stability-boosting events at a cost of tradition, and that’s a pretty good deal if you can afford it.

If tradition gets and stays very low, a republic can turn into a Despotic Monarchy. With the Res Publica expansion, this will instead be the unique Republican Dictatorship government, which will last until the current dictator dies. At that point, it’ll either go over to Despotic Monarchy, or if tradition is back up (probably through events, as it doesn’t raise on its own at this point) it goes back to the previous republic form.

Merchant Republics

An extra bonus for Merchant Republics in the expansion is that they can now create trade posts. These generate a bonus to trade power and naval force limits, with a limit of one per trade node, but must be ‘built’ in an owned province that isn’t in the country’s main node. However, despite what it seems, it’s not considered a building, and only costs Administration power (no money) to build, and is buried away in the trade section of the main province interface (though the existence of one does show up in the trade map mode with all the other modifiers).

This gives merchant republics a reason to develop a network of far-flung territories. Better yet, they continue working if the governmental form changes, but of course, there can’t be any new ones at that point.

Dutch Republic

As something of a follow up to the previous expansion, the Netherlands got more customization with this one. They can now choose (through event) to take the unique Dutch republic government form.

This gives them a slider, showing the relative power of the Statists and the Orangists. This shifts with every election (and, of course, events), and with the Orangists in power, the ruler rules for life, but doesn’t cause the republic to fall (though it will cause tradition to stop growing), and there is another election on his death (and events might kick them out of power). Statists act like a normal republic, though the Netherlands can always have royal marriages with other countries no matter who is in charge.

The primary government bonuses are to trade and heavy ships, the Statists will boost naval capacity and trade power, while the Orangists boost army capacity and stability.

As with most of the unique governments, it’s a fairly flexible form, and the bonuses are certainly good compared to early-game governments, and competitive with later ones.

Elective Monarchy

In 1444, Poland is leaderless, with a 0/0/0 interregnum, that can be solved in a few ways. The easy (and historical) one is to form a personal union with Lithuania, becoming the leading partner with Lithuania’s Kasimierez Jagiellon as the head of the monarchy. With the expansion, this will then fire an event to change the government type to the unique elective monarchy.

On the surface, this is a fairly good government, with bonuses to manpower, revolt risk, and vassals (which Poland starts with two of, plus Lithuania). On the other hand, the succession gets… complicated.

As the nobles vote for who succeeds to the throne, they are vulnerable to outside influences. Other countries can use a diplomat to canvas for a successor from their dynasty. Each month the diplomat is kept on the job there is a small chance of picking up a vote for that country’s candidate. You can spend legitimacy to gain votes for the Polish candidate, which should make it fairly easy to guarantee a native king given the scale of the voting, but there are events that seem to fire fairly often that will reduce his votes.

As a country that successfully supports its candidate, you get prestige, very good relations with Poland (a temporary +100 boost, as well as the normal +25 ‘same dynasty’ modifier), and a good amount of monarch power in all three categories. And once this happens to Poland they lose one diplomat (that hurts) and have a higher than normal cost to reduce inflation or war exhaustion until it can find a way out of the elective monarchy.

Finally, there’s a number of historical events that will fire related to this government, that tend to curtail power. Poland is given lots of possibilities with the setup of Poland-Lithuania, but there’s a lot of challenges too.

Conclusion

It’s hard not to recommend anything this cheap (and 50% off sales are fairly frequent), but… there may not be a lot here. National focus is the big ‘useful to everyone’ feature, and generally worth the money by itself… but it is also available through the later Common Sense expansion, so if you go for that big one, there’s no point getting this just for the focus.

On the other hand, if you want to play as any of the merchant republics, the trade posts are handy, and the extra mechanics for the Dutch are nice, and the electoral monarchy is also interesting, so there lots of good small reasons to buy this small expansion.

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My Elephant for a Kingdom

by on December 16, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fourth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything

Paradox gave Crusader Kings II another huge update after the grab-bag of Sons of Abraham. This time, the map was extended hundreds of miles east, to take in the entirety of India, Transoxiana, and part of Siberia.

The engine came in for a round of optimizations to keep this from bogging the game down, and of course, everyone got the new map with free patch 2.1, which was released with Rajas of India on March 25, 2014, and also featured an updated launcher. With Islam already at the fringes of India at any start date of the game, having adventures there is easy if you already have Sword of Islam.

Aren’t You Special

One place that the CK series was a bit inflexible is that there were seven types of troops, with no way to expand that. So patch 2.1 introduced something of a workaround.

The seventh type had always been horse archers that were not available to conventional Christian armies. Now, they were changed to be special troops, that could be different in each unit. As the building blocks of armies are individual units from separate levies, each levy could now have something different in the seventh slot, and the army as a whole would support multiple different types, with different stats, together.

Here, the point was to add elephants to Indian armies. But the slot was moddable, so that mods could be made that had all sorts of special or fantastic troop types available, as long as no holding had more than one special.

Big Game Hunting

As can be expected, there’s a fair amount of new content surrounding the new areas. New illustrations for the holdings, new events, and of course new dynasties and realms.

Some of it seems to have been not well worked out. Many realms start with the ruler personally holding the bulk of the realm with a few vassals, putting him well over the demense limit. This may actually reflect what’s known of the situation in the region at the time, implying that CK’s feudal system isn’t a good match for India, but the in-game problem is that this happens just as Paradox enforced feudalism more stringently.

“North Korea Mode” had become a popular way of getting around the constraints meant to be set on the player. If you hold all the lands in your kingdom yourself it doesn’t matter how much your non-existent vassals dislike you being over your demense limit.

So patch 2.1 tightened the screws by having all except your capital’s holdings’ musters and taxes reduced for being over the limit (annoyingly, you have to drill very deep to find the one place that modifier gets displayed). Considering that this starts with a 20% reduction at one holding over the limit, these massive new realms (where holding 20 out of 6 in the demense limit isn’t uncommon) start with almost no troops outside the capital. Even under normal circumstances, the reduction means it’s wisest to stay with your limit, especially once it’s over 3 or 4, as the reduction to all your musters will be bigger than the troops you can gain from a single holding.

India

The patch was more successful at getting the general feel of India across, however. Three new religions (all within one group of dharmic religions) were introduced in the patch, and the expansion makes them playable. While they conform to the normal CK II presentation of religion, they do have some important differences.

As all three are somewhat related, and coexisted peacefully, they generate smaller penalties to relations. There’s still a penalty for being of a different religion than someone else, but it is much smaller here. Similarly, the population will not revolt because their lord is of a different religion. A character of one of the faiths can also convert to one of the other two (once), through a decision with no penalty.

Indian religions do not have heresies like other religions, thus eliminating that source of trouble. Instead, they have sects, a bit like the Islamic Mutazilite/Ashari factions from Sons of Abraham. They are organized, and have good base authority, but have no formal head, and cannot use the equivalent of Crusades, though each one has a holy order that can be formed (in keeping with the practice established for everyone else in the previous patch). Finally, characters of these religions use karma in place of piety (with few, if any, mechanical differences), or purity for Jainites.

Indian characters also have a caste. This is simplified down to three, with the Brahmins being used for temples, Kshatriyas for castles, and Vaishyas for cities. While the Brahmins are technically top of the pecking order, this is a game of worldly power, and the manual acknowledges that the Kshatriyas are on top for game purposes. There are penalties for having the wrong type of holding, and Hindu characters cannot marry outside their caste without a large penalty. It is possible to change caste to Kshatria, though it’s expensive, hard to do, and still has lingering penalties akin to an acknowledged bastard.

Hinduism

Hinduism is most like non-Indian religions, with a number of opportunities to go to war. They can raid and loot non-dharmic realms like pagans, can declare holy wars against non-dharmics, and their troops have a notable bonus to morale. Combined with moderately good technological levels (especially for culture, which boosts opinions and demense), Hindu armies are capable, reasonably large, and the countries are fairly stable.

As mentioned before, they also pay the most attention to the caste system, as the other two do not generate so many non-caste penalties, which can cause trouble (a notable Hindu ruler in 867 is a Brahmin with no heirs, and no brahmins available to marry…). There are four sects, which can boost prestige, karma, fertility, or vassal opinion. There is also a decision to pick a patron deity, which will grant a one-point bonus to one stat, and a countering penalty to another.

Buddhism

Buddhists move further away from the normal patterns. Holy wars are unavailable, but they can still pursue claims on other’s territory (legitimate or not). They can designate one child as his heir instead of dealing with the usual problems of gavelkind inheritance, or changing the laws to something more stable, but less popular. In addition, there is no short reign opinion penalty, or problems with female rulers. There are three sects which can boost vassal opinion, health, or learning. That last in in addition to a learning bonus that all Buddhists get, and they can get ambitions to remove negative traits. On the other hand, they don’t get the morale bonus.

Jainism

Jainism is a pacifistic religion, avoiding all but the minimal amount of violence necessary for self-defense and protection of others. Naturally, many technically Jain rulers have not lived up to these ideals, and CK II still allows some latitude for action.

That said, Jain rulers still have fewer ways to go to war than anyone else. On the other hand, they get a boost to demense size and vassal opinion, making them the overall most stable realms in the game. Their two sects can grant a bonus to health, or a further boost to vassal opinion.

Conclusion

As an expansion, this is a pretty simple yes/no deal. If you’re interested in playing as a native Indian culture (and there’s plenty of reasons to want to), get this, if not, don’t. Like with SoI, there’s nothing else to it. The Old Gods gives the ability to play as a pagan, and a new start date; Legacy of Rome gives a bunch of events and retinues. This feels a little more one-note, and is recommended only if you’re feeling a little played out in boring old Western Europe, or if you have an interest in Indian history (in which case, go for it!).

Along with the realm annoyances, no Indians were included in the ‘interesting character’ listings for the at start bookmarks in 2.1, but that did get fixed when Paradox reworked the starting bookmarks in 2.2. The scope of the game took another leap larger with the patch, but it would take another major patch for Paradox to catch up with it and fill out the possibilities. So as a patch, this was in essence great, but needing a little more work.

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A Little of Everything

by on October 20, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the third in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion

The next expansion for Crusader Kings II was relatively small after the large update of The Old Gods. The overall goal was to work with all three “Peoples of the Book”, including introducing Jews to the game for the first time.

Sons of Abraham was released on November 18th, 2013 along with patch 2.0. The patch itself saw Paradox continue to shift over to pure Steam support, with their multi-player service (which had always had problems) shut down, and achievements and ironman mode (taken from EU IV) were added. A bit after release, Paradox announced that everyone would be given Steam keys so that all players could move over to that version, and use Steam’s multi-player and patching service.

Patch Mortality

The patch had in-game features as well, of course. Pregnancy had been somewhat handwaved, with a female character having a roughly 9-month trait before the birth of a new child. 2.0 introduced the possibility of dying in childbirth, as well as the child being stillborn, or having the ‘sickly’ trait, reducing health, but with the possibility of recovering from it, like the ‘ill’ trait.

A more complicated change was a rebalance of levies. Direct (demense) levy size is affected by your Martial skill, so more competent leaders will have more men to command. More importantly though, vassal levies were reduced. Vassals are judged by where they are in relation to your current capital, and the further away they are (by de jure titles, not physical distance), the less they owe you in service. So a vassal of the King of England in Normandy (outside the de jure County of Middlesex, the Duchy of Essex, the Kingdom of England, and the Empire of Britannia) may owe no troops to his lord, while the Mayor of London (in the same county as the capital in Westminster) owes the full regular amount.

This cuts down the power of larger countries a decent amount, while still making them much more powerful than their smaller neighbors, as anything outside the home duchy takes a hit, and lands outside the home kingdom aren’t providing a lot, unless you can get them to provide help directly by raising their troops themselves and fighting for you.

Judaism

Jews had not been present in Crusader Kings at all; after all, there were no great Jewish states in the Middle Ages. Now, they gained a presence. Much of it was fairly abstract, as you still don’t see the Jewish quarter of your cities any more than you see the rest of the general population. That said, just about anyone can now get a loan from the Jews. It will need to be paid off with interest of course, but it’s still an extra source of ready cash.

Or, you can refuse to pay. Like was done many times in the Middle Ages you can expel the Jews, which will erase any loans, and generally net you more cash from seized properties. You do gain the trait ‘arbitrary’, and take a hit to prestige, but no one will get seriously up in arms over it.

As long as you haven’t expelled the Jews, there is a chance that one will show up as a courtier, and a possible councilor. They will generally have at least one truly good stat, meaning they can be good councilors. There’s different religion opinion penalties and the like, so often they won’t be loyal enough to trust as a spymaster (though they won’t like anyone else much more…), and everyone else will be unhappy that you’ve hired him, but if he’s the right man for the job…?

Of course the expansion makes the Jews playable as well, but like the Zoroastrians, there’s not a lot of good options. In 1066, there is one Jewish Duke in Cumania who is playable, and he has no children. With The Old Gods, it’s better, as his ancestor is an independent Khan of the Khazars. In either case, there’s still only one province who’s population is Jewish, and the religion’s moral authority is low, so conversions are difficult.

But certainly not impossible, and like with the Zoroastrians, there’s a full set of events, and the possibility of re-creating Israel and building the Third Temple.

A Red Hat

The most wide-spread addition of the expansion is actually for Catholic rulers: a College of Cardinals was added to the Papacy. There are nine cardinals, and when the Pope dies, they elect the new one from their number depending on what they think of the candidates (akin to the electors system for the HRE introduced in EU III: Heir to the Empire).

This is still completely out of the hands of the player, but you can influence who gets into the College. Every bishop is a potential candidate, and the main College interface will tell you who the best candidate in your realm is, as well as the current most likely candidate. These are selected on a number of things (including Italian culture being a big bonus), and you can donate to a campaign fund to promote your candidate (similar to the doge elections in The Republic).

If a cardinal from your realm votes for the new Pope, you gain a sizable relations boost. And if a cardinal from your realm becomes the new Pope… you can start asking for favors. They cost piety and cause a relations hit, but you should have credit to burn from the relations bonuses as you ask for money (time to make back what you spent on cardinal elections), or a crusade, or sanctioning an invasion (what William of Normandy got for his conquest of England), or a number of other actions.

The two-step process is an interesting way to keep true control out of the player’s hands, while still granting tools for a potentially big bonus. Sadly, the election mechanic is a little too deterministic (there is variation) and simple for some episodes of the Middle Ages. Notably, there’s no way for the College to get hung up, and refuse to chose any one candidate for months on end.

Islam

There’s also a new feature for Islam, but it is very limited. Every Shia character with a minimum 50 piety can adhere to one of the two main schools of Islamic thought: Mut’azilite and Ash’ari.

Doing so does not cost anything, and does grant a bonus. Mut’azilites are rational, and gain a bonus to their learning, and to technology spread, while the more clerical Ash’arites get a monthly bonus to piety. Both are worthwhile bonuses, but all characters from the competing school have a relations penalty.

Knights of Religion

There’s a number of other bits that were thrown into the expansion. The most prominent is that holy orders were made more available. All religions now have at least one (only after reforming for the pagans), and the expansion adds two more for Catholics: the Knights of Calatrava and Santiago (which were more local to Spain than the more famous orders).

Furthermore, new mechanics were added to all the orders (with use of the expansion). You can get loans from them (like with the Jews), with the condition that the order currently has the 300 gold standard amount (not likely when it’s new, but easy if it has been successful), and you will owe them a favor which will come due later, such as sending one of your relatives to take the vows with them.

You can also donate money to an order, gaining piety and a relations boost with the order, the head of the religion, and your clerical vassals. Finally, the order will occasionally ask to build its own castle within your domain. It won’t be one of your vassals, but it will again strengthen ties with the order, and if you’re on the religious frontier, they will be readily available to help defend in holy wars.

Conclusion

Discounting Sunset Invasion, this expansion is the most optional one yet. The others tend to be either something you’re interested in, or something you skip. This one is more of a grab-bag of content.

That said, there’s a lot of interesting content here, and this review only covers the more prominent features; there’s a lot of events included that are not part of any of these, including some really off-the-wall ones. If you’re really into CK II, it adds some nice touches, and if you’re more into general content than the particular features of other expansions, this might be a place to start.

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A Fantastic Point of View

by on September 20, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the thirteenth in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure
Hearts of Iron II: Return Engagement
Europa Universalis III: A Whole New World
Europa Universalis: Rome: Make a Desert and Call it a Game
Hearts of Iron III: One Plus Two Equals Three
Victoria II: Same But Different
Sengoku: Shogun: Only War
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
March of the Eagles: A Minor EU

With the new level of presentation (and success) of Crusader Kings II, as well as a new development model, it became obvious that Paradox’s two most successful empire-management games were in need of a refresh. Europa Universalis IV was announced in August 2012, along with a ‘spread the word’ campaign to get fans talking about it and drive the news outward.

Europa Universalis IV was released for Steam with PC, Mac, and Linux versions in August 2013. Unlike CK II before it, it only existed in a Steam version (with Steam keys available through other stores), which allowed a couple new features, like achievements, and ironman mode, which forces you to keep one save file which updates itself. There were some problems with excessive saving slowing down the game (alleviated later), but it forces a very different play style as you cannot ‘save scum’ and reload if, say, a war you started turns out to be much tougher than you thought. Like with my CK II review, this about the game as it was early in its release life, namely as of patch 1.5.1. At this point, there had been one expansion, Conquest of Paradise, which will also be discussed.

Game vs Simulation

Parallel to my discussion in my EU III review, a new game in the series saw a new philosophy. It’s still largely the same grand strategy empire-management game running from 1444 to 1820, but there was a redesign at a fundamental level. In this case, Paradox seems to have tried to apply solid game design principles to the series.

Systems were pared back to reduce complexity, and with an eye towards interesting decisions instead of having a pure simulation feel to them. EU IV is still a complex game, and probably no easier for a new player to get into, but it does have a somewhat reduced set of things going on, that more tightly integrate with other systems.

As such, the entire ‘domestic policies’ system was gotten rid of, trade was scrapped for an all-new system, all the ‘envoys’ (merchants, diplomats, colonists, etc.) were simplified to a completely new system, and magistrates were gotten rid of entirely. Government types were simplified, technologies were simplified, and the entire budgetary sliders system scrapped.

In fact, the budget was nicely simplified. It used to be that you got one big lump sum of taxes at the beginning of the year, and then each month there was a budget for investing into technology and stability, which would generally run a small negative (to pay for army maintenance, among other things), leading to a cycle of a lot of money at the start of the year, and having to keep an eye on things so as not to run out before the end of the year, and be forced to take loans.

Now, the entire budget is done purely on a monthly basis. If you’re spending too much on a wrecked army, or expensive advisers, you’ll lose money, otherwise you gain it. No having to say, ‘I need this much for the next three months, so can’t actually afford that new cavalry unit.’

Monarch Points

At the same time, while money is still needed, it’s no longer the central currency of the game. That is now monarch points. Like in previous titles, each ruler is rated for administration, diplomacy, and military, and these are now the categories of development for the nation. In each, you get three points, plus the monarch’s rating, plus the ability of the your advisor for that category every month.

These points get used almost everywhere, but the main thing is for purchasing technology levels. Technology has been simplified from the five fields of earlier games to three (matching the categories of monarch points), and they now all have the same number of levels (33) instead of the military techs being more finely sliced than the others. Military only covers land military, while administration unlocks new government types, many different province improvement buildings, and most importantly, ideas. Diplomacy feels more like a ‘catch all’ from a lack of better ideas, and most notably is where naval military advancements are found, along with improvements to trade and colonies.

Advisors are about the same as in previous games, with seven different types available in each category (for 21 types compared to the old 36 as of EU III: HttT). But before, you could get a higher-quality advisor for an increase in their bonus while all bonuses are flat in EU IV. They still have a ranking, up to 3 (instead of 6), but the bonus for a higher-quality advisor is purely getting more monarch points each month.

Worker Placement

As mentioned before, the entire envoy system was changed. In earlier games, you would receive one of these, should it be a diplomat, colonist, merchant, or whatever, once every so many months, with a maximum limit on how many you could ‘store’ without doing anything with them.

Now, you have a set number. For instance, you generally always have one or two missionaries (depending on religion; various things can also increase this number). If you send him out to convert a province, you still have him, he’s just occupied, and you can recall him before his job is done so you can do something else with him instead.

Also, the nature of how envoys work was largely changed. For example, Missionaries would be sent out, and have a small chance of successfully converting a province each year, and that chance would be checked periodically until it worked or the missionary was recalled for whatever reason (like the province being conquered by someone else). In EU IV, it just takes a certain amount of time. Various factors can speed up or slow down progress (including making it impossible to convert the province at all), but the percentage progress will tick up in the sidebar outliner until it is done, and then the missionary will then automatically return to being available (possibly after some delay for travel time).

Diplomacy

In the essentials, diplomacy works as it did in EU III, with a robust range of options that can be taken. With the new system, came some changes though. First, separate opinion ratings for each direction in a relationship (A thinks B is -100 does not automatically mean B thinks that of A, and may have a -10 opinion, or even better) was taken from CK II.

Before, you could offer a gift to another country, and that was about the only way to directly raise their opinion of you. Now, you can assign a diplomat to improve relations with another country, and he’ll stay there constantly driving up the opinion of that country, to a maximum of a +100 bonus. Once that’s been done, there is an automatic message telling you that you might want to bring the diplomat home, but it can be done at any time. Once the diplomat leaves, this bonus will slowly go away, but you can always send the diplomat back to push it back up later.

This makes getting good alliances easier, since you can drive up the opinion of a few possible countries to try and get them to accept. On the other hand, there is now an imposed limit on how many countries you can have ties to at one time. Alliances, royal marriages, having a vassal, and a few other things all count for this (once for each country, no matter how many types of relations you have with them), and relations over the limit cost one diplomatic power per month (effectively slowing your generation of diplomatic power).

An interesting extra wrinkle to AI negotiations, is that along with the -100 to +100 relationship score, countries have attitudes towards each other now. This can be neutral (for a country far from its borders), to friendly (for countries nearby with good relations, and possibly a hidden historical friend modifier making this attitude more likely), to threatened (for a larger country next door), or hostile or rivalry (for obvious reasons). These attitudes can change with circumstances (allying and improving relations can shift a country from threatened to friendly), and modify AI behavior. For instance, a friendly country will probably not join in a war against you, even if they like the country requesting they join in more than they like you.

Ideas

National ideas also return from the third game, but get a thorough overhaul into a very different system. As before, there are idea slots that are opened up with advancing administration technology. Idea groups are chosen for those slots as they become available, with six different ones for each monarch point category (for a total of 19, as there’s an extra in military with two being mutually exclusive based on government type; there are eight possible slots).

The reason that the idea groups are separated by type, is that taking the group does not confer a bonus, but instead comes with a group of seven ideas that are then purchased sequentially with the appropriate type of monarch points. This is related to how ideas worked in March of the Eagles, crossed with the choose-your-own nature of ideas of EU III, with the addition of purchasing all seven in the group also grants an extra bonus for the group as a whole. Ideas are the second most expensive power purchase in the game (after technology), so figuring out what category of group you can afford to take is an important consideration.

In addition to that, all countries have traditions. These come in three parts: First, there are two bonuses that the country gets at the beginning of the game. Then there is a set of seven bonuses that are unlocked during the game, similar to the ideas from the groups; however these are unlocked for free (in sequence) for every three ideas purchased in the normal groups (so buying every idea in three groups would unlock everything). Finally, there is another automatic bonus that kicks in when the full group of seven is active.

This means all countries are encouraged to play something like their historical counterpart, as the bonuses generally reward, or make easier, such behavior (e.g., Russia gets a colonist from its traditions so it can colonize Siberia without being forced to take a colonization idea). Also, the two step process and expense causes lots of long-term planning and angst with lots of room for different strategies.

Naturally, not every country in the game has a unique set of traditions, but it comes close. As of patch 1.5, there were 71 separate ones for particular counties (including formable countries such as Spain and Russia), another 18 for various ‘groups’ of countries, like the minor German states, another 8 for use with the Crusader Kings II save converter, and a default one.

Limits of Growth

Another major new system is overextension. This acts as a brake on expanding powers, as any territory outside its acknowledged area (not ‘core’ territory) generates overextention as a percentage of its wealth compared to the main area of the country. Being overextended increases revolt risk, stability costs (in administration points), reduces trade and diplomatic power, and some other effects. At low values, this is not too noticeable, but it can add up, and adding one or two prosperous provinces to your empire can have a surprisingly big impact on overextension. Worst of all, at over 100%, some extremely nasty events are likely to go off, ensuring that the country will get the percentage down… or pay the price for growing too fast.

It used to be that failing all else, a province would become part of your ‘core’ territory after fifty years of possession. EU IV makes this much easier, as any province can immediately be assigned to become a core province. However, it still takes around three years for this to be accomplished, and costs administration power to do. If the problem is more immediate, then a vassal state could potentially be broken off, which should automatically have the region as a ‘core’ (or else they can’t form there…), or provinces could even be sold off to neighboring countries.

In all, this system is both more dynamic and more painful (in the good, ‘interesting decision’ way), as absorbing a new area taken in a war may bring things to a halt with a heavy load in administration power. And while you may be glad to have pried it off your rival’s hands, you may find a tech level or idea more important than administering it properly….

Trade

EU’s trade system had stayed fairly stable over three games, with EU III adding the ability to create new trade nodes that might out-compete older ones replacing the scheduled shifts of the first game. Here it was scrapped almost down to first principles.

Each province still generates a trade good, and each one belongs to a particular trade node. However, each node now connects to particular other nodes in a one-way trade network, and each province generates trade value and trade power in its node.

Each node gains value from its provinces, and from nodes upstream in the network (as the value gets passed on from one node to another). Each country gets power from its provinces in the node, from light warships protecting trade (a new mission for them), and from nodes downstream from it. That is, power in one node pushes up the stream to affect the previous node(s) in the network. The power of all nations involved in the node is totaled up to figure out how much influence each one has in the node.

The node that the national capital belongs to is the primary trade node for that country, and it will automatically attempt to take value out of that node (and the trade network altogether) based on its power there, to turn into trade income. All countries where that isn’t true will attempt to forward that trade into downstream nodes (so that more trade goes to the primary node to be collected). Merchants are sent out to either collect trade directly in a node (which also reduces power there, but can be handy if you have a bunch of provinces that belong to a node that doesn’t flow into the capital region), or steer trade in a particular direction (instead of going to all downstream nodes equally).

Countries don’t affect nodes they don’t know about, so at the beginning of the game, pretty much all the trade in the southern parts of the East flows into Alexandria, and then into Venice and Genoa (which are end points, so all trade is collected there), but as southern Africa is discovered and settled, trade will start steering around Africa to Seville where Spain and Portugal collect it.

It’s a really interesting system, and gets rid of the insane amount of micromanagement the old one would produce, making it a vast improvement right there. However, I have two problems with it: First, it’s an extremely opaque system, even with all the numbers surfaced in the UI, you generally can’t figure out what’s going on by observing it in game, and it is hard to figure out how much effect your meddling has. Second, it is an extremely static system. While the flow of trade will change over the course of the game, the fact that the nodes never change, and there are fixed origin and end nodes means there is no way to seriously derail the historical flow of trade with the most powerful of empires; you can only exploit it.

Military

On the other hand, plenty of things stayed roughly the same as EU III. Combat itself is the same as before, but the unit types from III are simplified down a bit, and all the little bonuses to combat that have existed since the beginning are vastly simplified (no more tiny changes every tech level) and displayed much more effectively.

Armies were made a bit safer in defeat, as one that retreats with low morale does a shattered retreat, which will force it to try to retreat to a high-value province currently controlled by the owner, which could be some distance away. This should be a relatively safe place, and the army gets a speed bonus during the retreat to get it some distance from pursuing armies. On the other hand, the AI was taught to sometimes create ‘hunter’ armies that chase after these formations to defeat them again before they can recover men and morale.

Sieges are actually the same as before, but the new interface shows all the things that were hidden before, so it feels brand new. Sieges progress every month or so, and exactly when that happens is shown on the siege view, and on the main map where a little meter (near the one that shows the army’s health) shows how long to the next siege roll.

All the modifiers to the roll are clearly displayed, and a hoverover shows the percentage chance of each possible result of the next roll. These are the same statuses that would happen before (‘food shortage’, ‘defenders desert’, etc), and these add to a siege progress modifier that is now displayed.

It turns out the monthly roll is a d14(!?), and it takes a modified 20 or better to force a fort to surrender. One thing not shown is very high rolls (a 14 by default) cause a breach, which adds a +3 modifier apart from the progress modifier (which maxes out at +12, so with a breach the maximum modifier is +15). A modified 4 or less does nothing, and the level of the fort is a negative modifier, so that’s why sieges don’t do much at the beginning and pick up steam as they go along; early rolls tend to do nothing, but as progress is made, the odds of further progress becomes greater.

Same Stuff, Different Game

Past the subjects already gone through, there are a lot of other things that still operate about the same as in EU III. Most notably, the new building system from EU III: Divine Wind was retained (without the magistrates), though a new interface was added where you could see all the places where a particular building was eligible to be built, and what its effect on the province would be.

Governmental forms were simplified down a bit to go with the streamlined technology system, but still operate the same, with administration tech opening up new forms with different bonuses. The heir system, legitimacy, and regencies from EU III: Heir to the Throne were retained, along with the reform system for the Holy Roman Empire. At the same time, republican governments got republican tradition as a replacement for legitimacy to measure just how robust their institutions are.

Decisions retained their large place in the game, along with events. As part of the re-focus towards a game, events shifted slightly back towards the EU II model. Many countries got dynamic historical events, which allow situations similar to history to cause events from history. This includes things like the Italian Wars, Muscovy Trade Company, the Dacke Feud, and many others. They’re generally less specific than the ‘acting out history’ events from EU II, but an interesting attempt to bridge the biggest gap between the previous two games, and a lot more options were built in than EU II ever had.

Conquest of Paradise

The first expansion for EU IV came out in January 2014, and focused on the New World, with the headline feature being a ‘random New World’ setting, so that an exploring player doesn’t know where everything is. This is more than sufficient reason for explorers to get it, but it took a while to get the rough edges off.

The system changed later, but at this point, it procedurally generates a New World, and reuses all the old province and nation names in a blender. All of them, including things like Lake Superior in the middle of the ocean. It also adds a bit of a delay to loading a game, as the altered world must be loaded after you pick the save game (understandable, but not the best marked thing in the interface).

The expansion also tries to make the Native American tribes more interesting to play (with or without a random New World). They are still largely in an impossible situation, with minimal technology, and high advancement costs. But they get a number of small buildings that can help out, and access to a set of 15 ideas (5 in each category) separate from the normal ideas that help overcome major problems, and if all of them are taken, the tribe can reform, losing all the buildings and ideas they’ve built up in return for gaining most of the current technology of a neighboring European country, changing to a monarchy and getting the ability to ‘westernize’, changing the technology progression to something less onerous. Finally, the one-province nations can migrate, abandoning their province for a neighboring one, either farther from or closer to something else.

The free patch that came with it introduced a new feature: colonial nations. The New World was split up into a bunch of regions, and any time you have five or more adjacent colonies in a region, they automatically convert into this new type of vassal state (that doesn’t take up a diplomatic slot). This does make colonization easier to manage, as a lot of them will start managing their own affairs, and colonizing further on their own, and of course, if they start getting unhappy with the parent country (and there’s some mechanics around that) they’ll revolt in a block, instead of an army in one province that would be simpler to crush.

Overall, they’re a big plus for the game, but you can’t see where the regions are, so it can be hard to know what you need to get a split off to happen, especially on the random New World.

Conclusion

Europa Universalis has always been my favorite series from Paradox, and IV is definitely the best of the lot (though Stellaris has since given it a run for its money as my favorite game from them; it has an unfair advantage of a genre that I’ve been enjoying for decades). Once again, it doesn’t entirely replace the previous games, as it does have its own philosophy, and I like simulation-style games enough to still really enjoy III on its own merits.

However, Paradox really paid attention to the overall mechanics of the central parts of the game, and it really shows that they sat down and thought hard about what the game was doing, and how it should work. At the same time, presentation was polished even further than in CK II, with even more numbers and modifiers surfaced in the tool-tips (including how fast temporary modifiers are decaying). And it didn’t stop here, Paradox has completely re-done a number of systems in the game since patch 1.5.1.

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