Recent posts

#31

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by PJL - January 02, 2026, 02:33:29 PM

There is something obviously unbalanced here.  If these people were the economic powerhouses of their day, why weren't they sailing to Europe for trade rather than the other way around?

They didn't need anything Europe have to offer, which is why when trade occurred, China mostly took in silver by default. Europe definitely "felt" that as the chronic specie drain fueled the regular rounds of currency devaluations that plagued early modern Europe as well as encouraging the American colonial ventures. The dynamic continued well into the 19th century, being a key motivator underlying the Opium Wars.

Hmmm, sounds familiar. China exports loads of stuff but imports little, and acquires lots of currency in the meantime, causing frictions with the Europeans and others.

#32

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by Syt - January 02, 2026, 01:31:47 PM

Another stickied post from Johan: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/htt-3-30-12-2025-where-do-we-stand-on-the-railroad-debate-for-eu5.1892558/

As a background, I've been making historical GSG since the end of the last millennium, and for almost all of those, the goal has always been for the games to try to guide and follow historical paths. I can only recall one time we actually wanted to have the game mechanics be an entirely emergent narrative and that was for EU3, where we literally removed the historical events we had in EU2.

Sometimes in the Hearts of Iron series, we tried to make the simulation be guided entirely by mechanics and the AI should reason out optimal tactics. However, we always had to direct the AI in that game with "cripple scripts", as the players wanted WW2 to play out the same way almost all the time.

How did we do the railroading in EU4? Well, first of all, we had lucky nations to make sure some countries had special bonuses so they always performed better. Also the AI was very good at conquering what it has claims on. Related to that, was a heavy use of Dynamic Historical Events, giving out claims and also creating things like Iberian Union. The EU4 AI was also very great at unifying its culture group, so we had to stop it at times with historical friend mechanics.

What about eu5?

Our goal was to create an even more detailed narrative, with Situations, creating "railroaded" mechanics that forces a certain narrative on game. Some of them work in this regard, like Rise of the Turks and the 100 years War, some of them do not work great like the War of Religions..

The AI has not been good enough to expand and grow countries until 1.0.10, where it became semi-decent at it.

Now what? Well, besides the fact that the AI is a tad bit too aggressive, we do not get the narratives we desire yet.

Our narrative goals for the game includes the following, and this is what we will constantly try to improve.

• The Holy Roman Empire should not get gobbled up immediately, but keep being fragmented until the last age.
• Hordes should fall apart and disappear by the mid game.
• The Ottoman Empire that grows deep into the Balkans and Levant, creating a France-level-threat in the south east.
• Russia should unite and go towards Siberia.
• Western European powers should build strong colonial empires.
• Europe should grow more advanced and powerful than the rest of the world as ages go by.

Other important historical narratives are things we want to see, but it's not something we view as mandatory to happen as often as the above.

• Forming of Spain and Poland-Lithuania
• Emergence of the Netherlands & Prussia

Cheers, tomorrow I'll post the 1.1 roadmap.

[Gameplay]

#33

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by Syt - January 02, 2026, 01:30:43 PM

Meanwhile, the 1.1 roadmap. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/the-roadmap-to-1-1-rossbach.1892687/

The 1.1 "Rossbach" update is planned for sometime early February 2026. Besides containing a lot of balance changes and fixes elsewhere, we are also aiming to improve gameplay, content, UI and art as well. We will go into more details and explain new features every Wednesday of 2026 until it releases.

Gameplay

New diplomatic abilities to transfer one of your subjects to another country, ways to destroy defensive leagues and transferring territories between two of your subjects.

Annexation speeds will now depend on your diplomatic spending, and countries can now reject Hegemony demands.

The Code systems for Religion has been reworked so you can now reform away from doom.

Colonial Charters will be reworked so instead of going to a certain percentage of your dominant culture/religion of pops, it now keeps track of how many pops you have sent etc, so you can get minorities in your colonies.

Abilities to provoke rebels to start an uprising now, and ability to change your cultures opinion of other cultures on your own. Speaking of rebels, "tiny" revolts will no longer form a new country and start an entire war, but instead impact the location they would have spawned in, when they reach 100%.

The game will also allow countries to get bonuses (or penalties) to how they are impacted by proximity in certain topographies. Ie, Austria gets some mountain/hills/plateau bonuses.

We added Coin Laws that impact what metals you use for coins and get inflation from. And of course Sweden can make copper coins which absolutely never will be a bad idea.

As mentioned in the 22nd of December post, we are reworking rivals, fixing levies/merc/regulars balance and much more.

We are also working on a complacency mechanic, reworking expeditions from being a purely script system to being a code system and adding in a slavery market distribution system.

Content Design

We will add a new disaster for Brandenburg, and add new unique advances and policies to some German countries.

A lot of focus on Japan and China mechanics have been done here, including Sengoku Jidai and Red Turbans Rebellions. Manchuria is also getting a fair bit of improvements, and the Tengri religion has been getting some gods.

In the Americas we have reworked the area in Brazil and improved the resource and food setup for both the Andes and Mesoamerica regions.

The Holy Roman Empire has seen a fair amount of attention as well.

We are also working with improvements to other situations like Western Schism and Council of Trent.


User Interface
We have added an "army/navy template" builder just like EU4 has, and also added in a nicer End of War dialog showing losses like eu4. We have also added rally points for raising levies, and recruiting mercenaries have quite a lot of less clicking for the average player.

There are now more settings when it comes to music and we have added in a music player so you can control which songs you want to listen to.

Alerts can be "permanently" discarded now, and you can restore them from a special UI if needed. The game will no longer reset filters to what the game thinks is best when opening a screen again, but you can now pin which filters you want in each screen.

We have added more abilities to manage the formation of a unit, and have a toggle for units to always autobalance for those who want it that way.

The Unit UI will no longer obscure half the screen for multiple units, and you can have a condensed version of the UI as well. We have also added lots and lots of other smaller quality of life things to the UI.

We have mentioned the new river mapmode, but we have also improved the road mapmodes and added several other new mapmodes, like coalitions, maximum control and many more.

Art
We have added a new loading screen for 1.1, which we will show off before release, and added some European 18th century hats, wigs and clothes, not to mention many icons for new advances and modifiers and more..

Enjoy, and have fun! Let's see what next year will bring.

#34

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by The Minsky Moment - January 02, 2026, 01:29:27 PM

I get the feeling that a great deal of production in east and south asia is a function of large populations.  They had a very productive food system that led to a larger population, the larger population produced more of an item because it was simply larger, but also consumed the items.

They had a very productive food system because they had what was for the time world class infrastructure and relatively stable social and political systems. 

#35

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by Syt - January 02, 2026, 01:29:10 PM

I hear you. I was excited for a game's release, enjoyed the launch and then just felt continuously pushed away by pretty much every step they took post launch.

Meanwhile, Stellaris seems to be struggling since its 4.0 release and HoI4's DLC doesn't seem to be doing too hot, either - maybe time to move on and sunset them?

CK3's DLCs last year were medium to bad (coronations), though the Asia expansion doesn't seem to be the dumpsterfire I expected (in fact it seems quite all right). For next year they said the focus will be mechanical depth, with a housekeeping/balancing patch before the new DLC cycle (they seem to make this a habit, which I approve). But time will tell.

Vic3 is maybe their only title where the DLC they delivered all year has been pretty much a success across the board, adding new mechanics and tying them all into each other. And even the flavor packs have come with cool mechanical additions in their free patches. Currently, I trust the Vic team the most.

#36

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by Josquius - January 02, 2026, 01:26:47 PM

I get the feeling that a great deal of production in east and south asia is a function of large populations.  They had a very productive food system that led to a larger population, the larger population produced more of an item because it was simply larger, but also consumed the items.

This is basically how civilisation works.

#37

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by The Minsky Moment - January 02, 2026, 01:22:35 PM

There is something obviously unbalanced here.  If these people were the economic powerhouses of their day, why weren't they sailing to Europe for trade rather than the other way around?

They didn't need anything Europe have to offer, which is why when trade occurred, China mostly took in silver by default. Europe definitely "felt" that as the chronic specie drain fueled the regular rounds of currency devaluations that plagued early modern Europe as well as encouraging the American colonial ventures. The dynamic continued well into the 19th century, being a key motivator underlying the Opium Wars.

#38

Off the Record / Re: TV/Movies Megathread

Last post by Syt - January 02, 2026, 01:19:59 PM

Reacher S2. Still fun, but less of the pulpy charm of the first season.

#39

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by HVC - January 02, 2026, 01:15:44 PM

For heathen read Italian Venice funded a Mamluk navy (and built armaments for it transported over Egypt) to take on the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean - which very nearly worked.

Also we really really should t discount the religious motivation and imaginary world of those European states. Prester John and outflanking the world of Islam to take Jerusalem were significant motivations in the early days. I think our secular age and mind looks for material reasons and views anyone talking about Prester John as either cynical or a credulous fool. Which I think is wrong and misses important parts of the picture.

Italians have always been treacherous bastards... second only perhaps to the French

#40

Off the Record / Re: Are we in the opening scen...

Last post by Sheilbh - January 02, 2026, 01:13:44 PM

For heathen read Italian Venice funded a Mamluk navy (and built armaments for it transported over Egypt) to take on the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean - which very nearly worked.

Also we really really should t discount the religious motivation and imaginary world of those European states. Prester John and outflanking the world of Islam to take Jerusalem were significant motivations in the early days. I think our secular age and mind looks for material reasons and views anyone talking about Prester John as either cynical or a credulous fool. Which I think is wrong and misses important parts of the picture.