Recent posts

#1

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Josquius - Today at 04:28:54 AM

Terrible tragedy. Shit policing.
Interesting out of it though to see Reform turning against the Sikhs. Before they had really been quite pro sikh, a lot of sikh supporters, they saw common ground in views of Muslims that could be cultivated.


Lately on social media I'm seeing a new slant on the "it's all about  housing stupid" - some research found the best way to drag women away from terf groups isn't convincing them they're wrong and should show empathy.... Rather if they get a hobby.
From this it then follows radicalised old guys wouldn't be doing quite so bad if they only had space at home for a model railway, a wood working workshop, a home brewery, or whatever.

#2

Off the Record / Re: Scandinavian Thread

Last post by Solmyr - Today at 04:21:25 AM

After 69 days of negotiation, Denmark has a government again.

Nice.

#3

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by garbon - Today at 02:27:47 AM

Farage (via Facebook) on the release of the officer footage* from when that Sikh murdered a white student claiming he had been racially abused. Apparently stabbed student was handcuffed while they listened to the Sikh's accusations.

This is the most shocking footage of discrimination that you will ever see.
A white boy being handcuffed by police officers more concerned by an accusation of racism than an act of murder.
This must be a turning point. White lives matter too

*I can't say first hand what it shows as I don't know why I'd want to watch that.

Of course, it was yesterday that the Sikh murderer received a life sentence with a minimum of 21 years. Not sure how that reflects the justice system not caring about white people.

#4

Off the Record / Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinc...

Last post by Crazy_Ivan80 - Today at 12:44:52 AM

If it's  not on truth social (the gilded testament) it's not important.

Remember, the 'messiah-doctor-astronaut' himself once said that smart people don't like him

[Diplomacy & Great Powers�]

#5

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

Last post by Syt - Today at 12:37:39 AM

1.3 open beta to start this week:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-talks-110-27th-of-may-2026.1925159/

Hello Everyone and Welcome to a Happy Wednesday, the day where we talk about what is happening to Europa Universalis V. This day marks a special occasion, as we are announcing that patch 1.3 will be going into open beta early next week!

We have been working on this for a fair bit, and there is a lot to cover, so today I am going to walk you through everything that is in the patch, from top to bottom.

Consider this your complete overview before you get your hands on it.

Diplomacy & Great Powers�

The Great Power system has been one of the most-discussed mechanics on the forum since launch, and the core complaint has been consistent: Great Power status feels self-reinforcing in a way that has nothing to do with actually being powerful. Players pointed out that the diplo capacity bonus stacked invisibly on top of everything else a dominant country already had, making it harder for anyone trailing to close the gap through diplomacy rather than pure conquest. The score formula was also opaque, and it wasn't easy to understand why you were or weren't a Great Power. The threshold felt arbitrary rather than tied to anything visible on the map.

We're replacing the score formula with an area-dominance model. Each land area is assigned a point value from 1 to 10 based on its tax base, and a country dominates an area by controlling at least two-thirds of its ownable locations. Great Power status requires 30 points. A new intermediate Regional Power tier kicks in at 15, granting half the Great Power bonuses.

Critically, neither tier grants diplo capacity anymore. Diplo capacity is now driven entirely by laws, advances, and government, removing a hidden compounding advantage for already-dominant countries. Two new map modes visualize area dominance across the entire map, and updated tooltips tell players exactly how many locations they need to reach the next threshold.

On trust, the forum had a specific and legitimate grievance: professing trust punished you in the wrong direction. The cost was paid in Diplomatic Reputation, which meant that publicly committing to a relationship made you look less reliable to everyone else. Players described it as "diplomatically self-destructive" and the mechanic directly undercut its own purpose.

Professing Trust, publicly declaring confidence in another ruler, now costs Prestige rather than reducing your Diplomatic Reputation. The new cost reflects the real-world logic better: committing yourself to a relationship is a matter of personal standing and political capital, not a hit to your general credibility on the world stage. A powerful emperor can afford to profess trust freely; a struggling minor nation must be more selective about where they spend their reputation.

Economic growth now carries diplomatic consequences, which players have actually asked for in various forms. The complaint was that a country could triple its economic base with zero effect on how its neighbors felt. Countries that experience strong economic growth now become more threatening in the eyes of their neighbors, reducing trust equilibrium with other nations. Both short-term growth (over 5 years) and long-term growth (over 50 years) are tracked separately, applying a penalty scaled by the growth rate. A country that doubles its economic base in 5 years loses roughly 10 trust with every other country.

The economic base is now also surfaced in the economy panel with a historical graph, making growth trajectories visible to players tracking their own position or watching rivals.

Alliance blocs now have saturation upkeep costs that scale with size and strength, and stacking union partners is no longer free. The feedback here has been clear: large alliance conglomerations had no downside.

Annexation of much smaller subjects now scales the size bonus linearly with pop ratio rather than applying a step-function cliff at the threshold. Annexation progress also pauses during civil wars and revolt wars. The previous situation, where an overlord could continue annexing a subject currently mid-civil-war, was caught by players fairly quickly and was simply not intended behaviour, as it meant you would LOSE locations currently in revolt or civil war, as the annexation could finish quicker.

Finally, automated diplomacy gets fine-grained controls for the first time. Players have asked for the ability to set aside manual diplomat slots for some time. Now they can reserve a specific number of diplomat slots for manual use and toggle individual action types on or off independently: opinion improvement, gift-sending, spy networks, alliances, royal marriages, and more.

Military & Combat�

Naval combat has been one of the most consistent negative points in forum feedback: fleet battles drag on without being decisive, and players have described them as attrition grinds rather than engagements with strategic weight. Naval combat has been fundamentally rebalanced toward decisiveness. Ships now sink far more readily, turning fleet engagements into the decisive battles they should be. A stackwipe bug where overrun units couldn't shatter-retreat has also been corrected. The hunt-navies objective now persists through peace as a standing order rather than needing to be re-issued every truce cycle, which addresses repeated complaints about exactly that friction.

Geography in naval composition has been another point of frustration, specifically that galleys had terrain bonuses, but heavy ships paid no penalty for sailing into the same waters. The asymmetry was almost entirely one-sided in a way that made naval composition feel irrelevant in enclosed seas. Meaningful combat penalties for heavy ships in enclosed seas and narrow straits now mean that a fleet of war galleys defending the Bosphorus or the Baltic shallows will genuinely outfight the broadside-heavy warships that dominate the open ocean. If your empire lives and dies on the Mediterranean, building galleys is now a real strategic choice.

Land combat receives complementary treatment in the new coastal, inland, and river combat bonus system. Unit types can now receive effectiveness bonuses or penalties depending on the geography of the battle location. Coastal and inland are mutually exclusive per battle; river applies independently and can stack with either. Historical values have been assigned across archetypes: Varangians gain significant river and coastal bonuses, and heavy cavalry and elephants suffer penalties near water. These modifiers appear in unit type tooltips alongside existing terrain bonuses. A cap on initiative-derived engage chance also lands in this patch, preventing high-initiative forces from achieving implausible stack-wipes against equal-sized opponents.

Rebellions have been a major complaint since launch. Rebels spawning with massive garrisons and holding fortifications indefinitely was consistently called out as immersion-breaking and strategically incoherent. Rebellions are now fundamentally more dynamic. When a revolt spawns, each fort in the affected region rolls for loyalty based on estate satisfaction, local unrest, cultural and religious integration, and how far the rebellion has progressed. Loyal forts stay in the player's hands and are excluded from rebel territory transfer. Rebel garrisons are now drastically reduced by revolt type: slave revolts incur a 90% reduction, cultural and religious revolts 80%, pretender and estate revolts 70%. Together, these changes end the era of rebels holding fortifications indefinitely on implausibly large garrisons and make the geography of a rebellion feel genuinely contested.

Before things reach the revolt stage, two new negotiation interactions give players more options, which is something the community has asked for repeatedly. "Buy Off" costs a lot of gold and reduces rebel progress; "Accept Demands" costs government power and applies the faction's scripted concession effects. Both are restricted to factions that haven't yet reached the full revolt threshold, and the AI applies sensible guards against using them when at war or treasury-constrained.

Two major new military features arrive for active wars. Unit Lending lets players send a portion of their armies to fight under a war ally's command, addressing longstanding asks for more nuanced coalition warfare tools. The lent units serve until the shared war ends and cannot be bribed away, giving a precise tool for tipping coalition wars without committing full forces.

Independent Operations let players assign armies to autonomous AI control for the duration of a war, with the AI handling sieging, hunting enemy forces, and defending as the situation demands.

Government & Estates�

Estates have been a frequent target of criticism: they felt like abstract sliders rather than real political constituencies. Players pointed out that estate opinion and behaviour were based on the crown's culture and religion rather than the estates' own composition, which produced nonsensical situations. Estates now have Culture and Religion based on the most powerful pops within them, weighted by local control and local estate power. Estates with different Culture or Religion from the Crown will have lower satisfaction but also less power, scaling with how tolerated their religion and culture is. Their opinion of foreign countries is now based on their own culture and religion rather than the crown's, and they may create Parliament Agendas, pushing the crown to change its ways. This makes estates feel like real constituencies with their own identities rather than abstract sliders.

Eight new estate interactions address a gap players identified early: there was nothing to do when a war went badly and you needed relief fast. Generic options include requesting extra levies or extraordinary taxes; estate-specific options range from clergy loans and noble diplomats to emergency parliament sessions. All carry significant satisfaction penalties and a five-year cooldown, though penalties are halved for defenders in a war. The estates panel has been updated to a popup-based layout to accommodate the expanded action set.

Several government feedback loops address long-standing gaps players have pointed out. Low devotion now applies a monthly religious influence penalty, giving theocracies an actual feedback loop on devotion management. Low republican tradition now penalises estate satisfaction and legislative efficiency, giving republics a meaningful death-spiral risk if tradition collapses. Abdication has been rebalanced: prestige cost halved and legitimacy cost doubled, because players correctly noted that the old design made it a prestige problem when it should obviously be a legitimacy one. Each Cardinal now contributes +1% clergy estate satisfaction, a small bonus that stacks meaningfully for Catholic countries managing a full cardinalate.

Research speed is now more sensitive to control. The complaint that hollow-core empires could research at full speed despite low control over vast territories has been consistent. Average Control now has a larger impact on research speed, meaning hollow-core empires with low-control territory can no longer research at full speed. Control is now a real research lever, not just a revenue modifier.

Twenty new government reforms deepen the societal values system, ensuring any given Societal Value has at least two distinct reform options when pursued deeply. This is a first step, with more reforms planned in subsequent patches.

Oh yeah, we also made a toggleable full screen selection for government reforms where you can filter on societal value unlock etc..

The Holy Roman Empire gains its most significant new mechanic in some time with Imperial Circles. The criticism of HRE gameplay has been that managing fifty individual princes scales poorly and that non-elector princes have no meaningful mid-game political goal. Imperial Circles are a mid-tier governance layer unlocked by passing the Imperial Circles law. When the law passes, a formation window opens in which the map is carved into regional groupings based on HRE ownership, members join their geographic circle, and a merge cascade ensures every surviving circle is large enough to function, after which the circles lock permanently. Each circle can elect a Circle Leader who manages relations with both the Emperor and their own members through a set of new interactions, while a satisfaction score tracks leadership quality and drives political pressure if neglected. The system gives the Emperor meaningful regional intermediaries rather than fifty individual princes, and gives non-elector princes a genuine mid-game political goal.

Two new culture metrics, Tradition Power and Influence Power, feed into Estates Satisfaction and Diplomatic Reputation respectively, making cultural investment mechanically relevant beyond flavour.

Economy & Trade�

The price band bug is one of those silent problems that took time for the community to identify, but once it surfaced it explained a lot: the feedback loop that was supposed to constrain economic snowballing was barely functioning. A subtle but far-reaching bug caused every age transition to widen the allowed price range, making existing prices appear artificially "cheap" relative to the new ceiling even though nothing had actually changed. The fix replaces the old band-normalised formula with a simple price deviation: how far is the current price from its base, expressed as a percentage. This number is now stable across all ages, and genuinely expensive goods in the later game now carry their full weight in pop satisfaction calculations. This strengthens the negative feedback loop that was supposed to put a brake on economic snowballing, and which until now was barely functioning.

Building directly on that, pop demand now responds to price. This has been asked for in various forms: players noted that goods remained in demand regardless of price, which meant deficits were always resolved by overbuilding rather than by trade routes finding equilibrium. When a good is scarce and expensive, pops now demand less of it rather than insisting on the same quantity regardless of cost. The coefficient is tuned so that a good trading at double its default price sees roughly 40% less demand, with a floor preventing complete collapse at extreme prices. This is visible in market breakdown tooltips, and players can watch populations adjust their consumption habits in real time. The practical effect is that regional deficits can now persist in stable equilibrium rather than being immediately overbuilt away, giving trade routes a genuine reason to exist deep into the campaign.

Production buildings were one of the most-discussed balance issues post-launch: building was almost always profitable, which removed the decision-making that should exist around investment. Default Profit margins have been dramatically reduced across the board. Guilds now target 20% profit, workshops 25%, manufactories 30%, and mills 35%, down from values that were in some cases two to four times higher. Building is now a genuine investment decision: you need the right inputs available and priced well for it to pay off. Over 200 production method input amounts were recalibrated to hit these targets precisely. The practical upside is that efficiency modifiers now feel meaningful: a 5% production efficiency bonus represents a substantial share of your total margin rather than a rounding error on an already-fat profit.

The market access system directly addresses the complaint that isolated locations could scale production freely. Production building levels are now capped by market access, so isolated locations can no longer scale freely. Establishment gain also scales with access, meaning buildings in well-connected markets ramp faster to full productivity. Foreign buildings are excluded from effective building level calculations, closing a loophole where cross-border stacking inflated numbers the player didn't actually control.

Military goods consumption has been consistently flagged as too low. The army and navy were significantly under-consuming relative to their nominal sizes. All army goods demands have been doubled. Naval construction demand multiplies tenfold, maintenance increase dramatically, ship build prices quadruple, and ship maintenance costs now grow fivefold across the six ages to match the land-cost curve. The community has been asking for late-game naval power to feel like the economic commitment it historically was. A fleet of ships-of-the-line in Age 6 is now a real budget item.

New financial instruments arrive to complement the reworked economy. Countries with the Central Bank advance can now issue government bonds, a new debt instrument with size and interest scaling based on modifiers, tracked separately from estate and international loans.

Alongside this, a Creditworthiness system from 0 to 100 tracks a country's borrowing history. Responsible borrowing earns progressively lower interest rates; defaults, bankruptcy, and attacking creditors make future borrowing significantly more expensive. Players have asked for more nuanced debt management for some time, and this delivers it.

Ten unique historical banks are added: the Aragonese Taula de Canvi, the Berenberg family bank, the Bank of Hamburg, three Genoese banking families (Grimaldi, Spinola, Pallavicino), the Mendes family, the Venetian Banco del Giro, and built on the new Central Bank mechanism, the Bank of England, the Dutch Wisselbank, and the Swedish Riksbank.

Ten historical regions gain permanent production identity modifiers that reflect their real economic legacies. Flanders and Tuscany produce fine cloth more efficiently; Venice leads in glass; Toledo and Milan in weapons; England in wool; Bengal and Gujarat in cotton. These are baked in as static regional bonuses from day one. Players have asked for controlling historically important regions to feel meaningful, and these modifiers shape trade flows and production decisions throughout the entire campaign.

Several other economy-related changes round out the patch. Burgher trade range now starts at 600 and increases with each passing age, reflecting the historical expansion of commercial networks. Wool is reclassified as a raw material rather than a food source, so players relying on wool regions to feed populations will need to diversify. Repeating advance modifiers covering food production, RGO sizes, morale, maritime presence, and others now provide greater bonuses in Ages 3 through 6 than in earlier ages, giving progression through the age system a genuinely compounding character.

Production, Buildings & Automation�

Auto-expand has been one of the most-requested features since launch. The community has been clear that manually expanding every production building and raw material site across large empires is friction without strategic content. Auto-expand now arrives for both production buildings and raw material sites, and the two systems work consistently. Flag a location, enable the country-wide automation toggle, and the game checks it each month and queues the next expansion the moment conditions are met. The building or site has to be functional, below its cap, profitable, fully staffed, within budget, and legally eligible. If any condition slips, the site waits quietly and resumes when the situation recovers. Per-location flags are preserved separately from the country-wide toggle, so a global pause doesn't erase individual selections.

The cabinet automation split matters more than it sounds. Players have consistently asked for more granular control over automation, specifically the ability to auto-hire advisors while keeping manual control over when their actions fire, or the reverse. The single cabinet toggle is now two separate controls: one for auto-appointing and dismissing advisors, one for auto-triggering advisor actions. Players who want to automate hiring while retaining manual control over when actions fire can now do that cleanly, and so can players who want the opposite.

Mills have been underused in the late game, and the community noted it. They are cheaper to build, cities construct them faster than smaller settlements, and megalopolises receive an additional efficiency bonus. The industrialization advance now grants a 50% construction discount realm-wide. Mills now employ fewer workers per unit of output, making them genuinely competitive with other production buildings on an output-per-upkeep basis. The research cost for the AoR mill advance has been cut by 75%, removing what players identified as a significant barrier to reaching this building tier at all. Mills also now contribute possible burgher pops per level.

Five new town rights expand what players can do with their settlements, which has been a repeated ask. The existing toolbox felt thin outside of specific regional sets. Market Charter boosts the local marketplace and burgher trade capacity. Free Town Charter raises migration attraction and merchant capacity with a strong crown-to-burghers power shift. Fortress Town improves garrison, defensiveness, and manpower with a nobility tilt. Mining Charter increases max RGO size on mines, exclusive with Scandinavian rights. Studium Privileges provides literacy, pop promotion, and institution growth, available only in cities and megalopolises. Together with the staple port, granary town, and Scandinavian set already in the game, town rights are starting to function as a proper development toolbox.

Rural glassmakers are extracted as a standalone building rather than bundled with town glass production, letting rural economies develop glass without a town tile. Glass and cloth guilds are removed from basic European town starting setups, meaning default towns are now leaner and players and the AI have to build them up deliberately. Trade Offices can now be built in non-ports, removing what was always an arbitrary restriction.

The cost-to-efficiency conversion addresses runaway stacking. Players identified that linear cost reduction allowed obsessive stacking of a single modifier to produce extreme results. Roughly 30 modifiers that previously reduced costs linearly are converted to efficiency modifiers with diminishing returns and a 50% cost floor. Stacking bonuses now rewards broad investment: a player who has invested widely across multiple modifier sources will feel the full benefit, but obsessive stacking of a single modifier will hit the floor.

Reformation & Religion�

The Reformation spread system had a well-documented issue: its spread patterns felt mechanically arbitrary rather than historically grounded. The spread system has been moved from a manual monthly script loop to the engine's proper epidemic-spread pipeline, bringing it in line with how diseases and other contagion mechanics work. Two new movement definitions, lutheranism_movement and calvinism_movement, handle spread automatically with per-pop-type multipliers. Burghers spread Lutheranism most readily; slaves are immune to both. Historical reformers now act as named spreaders that boost growth in their home cities, replacing the old logic of constructing preacher buildings as the primary spread mechanism. Player-buildable preacher buildings are retained as opt-in growth boosters at a cost of 25 religious influence each. The result should be a Reformation that feels historically plausible in its geography and pacing rather than mechanically arbitrary.

Content & Flavour�

Italy was one of the most-discussed regions in terms of underrepresentation relative to its historical and gameplay importance. Two Italian situations, Guelphs & Ghibellines and Italian Wars, receive dedicated overhauls, adding new actions and options, rebalancing existing content, and improving UI clarity and visual presentation. Over 100 new events cover Italian Renaissance culture and dynamic historical content for minor Italian nations including Verona, Montferrato, Siena, Pisa, and Lucca, alongside a rework of the starting development and events of the Scaligeri War. Every Italian location and character name now has dialect-specific rendering across all Italian dialects. Around 180 new advances are added for Italian and some Balkan nations, with roughly 40 more reworked or repurposed, building on the 300+ Balkan advances added in 1.2 and continuing the project of giving regions genuinely differentiated gameplay.

Two new sets of Generic Bureaucracies are introduced: a European-style early modern state set covering Commissariats, Admiralties, and Colonial Offices for mid-to-late game, and an early Chinese bureaucracy set integrating with the advances tree, government reforms, law policies, and dynastic transition events. China now has four new China-specific bureaucracies contributing to Celestial Authority.

Military order balance changes directly address the feedback that wealthy orders attracted compounding payments with no counterweight. A cap on the number of sponsors an order can hold, scaling with the order's rank, prevents the feedback loop where wealthy orders attracted ever-larger payments. No single sponsor can more than double the order's existing income, and calling on a sponsor for emergency gold or manpower now requires the order to actually be at war.

Misc UI�

Tooltips for units now indicate with a colored bar the spread between levies, regulars and mercenaries.

And we also have this new tab in the advances screen, so you can track the progress to your unique national ideas.

Next week we'll see what we will talk about, but probably some 1.3 related things..

About the Estates cultures ... while I understand the idea behind the system, I think maybe long term they should look to a more flexible and granular factions system, not entirely unlike the IG system in Vic3 but more general, based on POP affiliation? So you can choose who "your" elite and pillars of powers in your country are, to an extent and incentivizing esp. in the beginning for smaller easier to control groups and only towards the 1800s broaden the franchis, so to speak. But such a system might be too hard for the AI to handle and too easy for a player to exploit.

#6

Off the Record / Re: NHL Hockey thread

Last post by viper37 - Today at 12:32:56 AM

How do you Canadians feel about 4th place in the World Cup?       

Most people really don't care about this tournament over here.

Most of the top NHL players aren't usually going as it's during the playoffs.

#7

Off the Record / Re: [Canada] Canadian Politics...

Last post by viper37 - Today at 12:29:50 AM

Some perspective for us from someone who came here from Ukraine

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DZBC2OdRj1r/?igsh=cXc3bm5vMWFmNjF0

She said the magic words: English.

Carney govt has opened the door to an unregistered lobbyist to meet top echelone employees from the public workforce to discuss his plan pf ending bilingual requirements for some Federal workforce employees and replace the language profiency with AI tools instead.

I suppose that as long as you speak English natively and agree to have the Federal govt decide of everything and havr tand have the last say on everything, the country is working well enough.

#8

Gaming HQ / Re: Victoria 3

Last post by Syt - Today at 12:28:36 AM

Was trying a Prussia game with the current patch (and the White Peace fix). Cozying up to GB/Russia to counter-balance France/Austria.

I was having a bit of a struggle of it, because my budget was often in precarious situations. I never dipped deep into debt (interests are a bitch in early game IMHO). At points I had high taxes, plus 8+ consumption taxes to keep my balance afloat e.g. during an 1848 civil war (Labour secessionists in Brandenburg the only ones I hadn't properly suppressed) or lending a hand to Hanover and Bavaria in their wars in exchange of them becoming my subjects. More than once I paused all state construction.

But getting up to 1851 I have yet to build a single additional construction sector and my navy is only very slowly expanding (up to 5 ships from the 1 I started with). My economy is keeping up with the other powers, but I might not understand the new meta because normally I expanded my economy much faster than this in early game.

At least my private investors are building railroads.

#9

Off the Record / Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinc...

Last post by Syt - Today at 12:22:26 AM

I see comments saying that those guys are too stupid and don't understand the science.

I'm sure they do (at least on a basic level) but believe they can ride it out.

#10

Off the Record / Re: The AI dooooooom thread

Last post by Syt - Today at 12:21:41 AM

Meanwhile, Claude has become the Holy Grail in our company. "Ugh, ChatGPT ... can I get Claude access? But please without token limits."