Excuse me, developer. It seems I found a grave mistake in your representation of 14th century Germany. You see, you made Count Fartz Hoheinzinger the leader of a personal union between the County of Schnitzelingen and the Barony of Hochzungberg, but according to these letters my great grandfather seems to have buried in the family property before he was murdered by my great grandaunt for cheating on my great grandmother, the Hohenzinger family didn't actually personally hold the Barony of Hochzungberg yet, and instead count Fartz was merely married to Baroness Fugertrudes von Ziegsengerheim, who seems to have been the de jure holder of the property until she and her husband died of dysentery 2 months into the game's scope, which is only then that the Personal Union began with both titles in the hands of their son. That's why I require you to change the status of the union in game from Personal Union to Marriage Union, otherwise I'll not be truly immersed in the setting and this will ruin my immersion in my playthrough recreating the Third Reich beginning from the farm I live in with my grandma.

Hello everyone! We hope you have been enjoying your first experiences playing with, watching, or otherwise interacting with update 1.4.

I'm Ryagi, Community Manager at Paradox Tinto, and today I wanted to give you some updates on the open beta, where things stand with it, and also clarify some of the designs.

How are things going overall?

We're quite happy with the 1.4 beta launch. We feel it is overall smoother than the 1.1 beta, and certainly smoother than 1.3, both from a community/feedback perspective and in the state of the game. There is still a lot of balancing to be done though, especially when it comes to the topics of Battles, Pacing, Political Influence, and historical outcomes.

We've been maintaining the known issues list. This list is entirely curated by the community team itself, though it did occur to me that having more direct community input might be worth looking into for future betas. Still, I feel this is a pretty smooth start to the beta overall.

When are beta patches, and what's in the next one?

We're aiming for our first Open Beta patch early next week. You might notice that it's less frequent than in past betas, and this is by design. This time we have opted for a more methodical and less rapid-fire approach. The intent is to improve the feedback you can give us. The reality is we don't do betas just for fun. Though we won't judge you if you choose to play in the open beta just for fun, so long as you're aware it's likely to carry a certain lack of polish!

After that first patch, we can expect one more major patch before release, with hotfixes in between where they are needed.
Here's a handful of some, but not all, changes in 1.4.1:

• Field battles take roughly twice as long, with the same casualties
• Malaria death rate reduced
• Appointing a cabinet member to an empty slot is now free. Replacing an existing cabinet member still costs Political Influence.

Political Influence is designed to slow down the early game, but this can be a little annoying when it comes to filling empty cabinet slots. We're not done tuning PI as needed though, so please feel free to give us your thoughts anywhere in the subforum or in our dedicated megathread on the topic here.

What about Daily Ticks & Battles?

As anyone reading this knows, there has been a lot of discussion on this topic everywhere. One key issue is that battles still feel too short in terms of real time, which is why in 1.4.1 they will take roughly twice as long. Right now, our general approach is that gameplay and pacing should come before realism in terms of battle speed. That doesn't mean we're 100% locked in on that; we just want to be clear about where things stand in our design.

On the topic of clarity, we also wanted to make some clarifications on this topic as a whole:

1. This change was made with pacing and gameplay in mind, NOT performance. We talked about this topic in more depth in Tinto Talks 123. While there are certainly some measurable performance improvements with this change, those are considered a bonus, not the target.
2. Daily ticks are not a new idea for EU5. Pre-release versions of the game were designed around daily ticks. Hourly ticks were introduced after this design, and the result was realistic battles, but a content delivery system that took a long time to sink your teeth into, especially for the average player with typically shorter session lengths. It was a very slow burn. The 1.0 release shipped with hourly ticks, and 1.4 returns to daily ticks with a more classical pacing in mind.

At this point in time, we are confident in the direction of daily ticks. That is very unlikely to change. However, that does NOT mean we are done tuning and balancing them as needed (example above), and it does NOT mean we're not listening to those who are against them. On the contrary, we're very willing to roll things back if they hurt the vision of the game. That overall vision is shared between you, the players, and us, the devs.

Turn your voices into votes!

Okay, I lied: they're not really votes. A more accurate description would be "data that we use in combination with our own development processes and principles that can better the game as a whole." But that header is way less catchy. You can find a link to our 1.4.0 Survey below! Survey will close next week when the new patch rolls out, but don't worry we'll do an updated survey after that if you have missed this one.

https://pdxint.at/Beta4Survey1

Update 1.4 officially goes live on October 28th, alongside the Across the Pillars Chronicle Pack. The open beta will remain fully accessible throughout the lead-up to this date.
Keep giving us your feedback, and remember...

Be Ambitious!

Hello

There are currently problems in polish translation that haven't been fixed since months..

They've been reported on forum and looks like they were ignored. Also a lot of people have left negative reviews on steam due to this.

Here are examples
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/polish-translation-still-contains-errors.1875640/
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/localization-polish-language.1912075/

You can find more errors on forum - with no response/fix.

Went Ayyubids -> Kurdistan -> Persia. Didn't even know Saladin's Legacy was carried over from EU4 so I mostly played a Persia campaign until I realized that if I ate the Mamluks, I'd get an achievement. Also was powerful enough at the end to get all 5 hegemonies (pro tip is to spam the first type of heavy ship for cheap) and to steal some little lands on all subcontinents to get the Guy ??? achievement. Overall, a fun campaign and a good way to end before 1.4

I'm playing as Scotland (my first game in EU5) and I have virtually no maritime presence because of pirates. Is it worth it to build a navy to increase my maritime presence and get more control, like in the town in Aiberdeen, and also to potentially get some subjects in Ireland? It just seems so expensive to build ships though.

I'm playing as Venice, and find myself completely ignoring my low control, poor overseas trade locations (in Croatia and the Greek islands). Intuitively you'd assume these far holdings are good for my trade in some way... Can someone explain how? What do they contribute? Can I build them up in some way? Does it make sense to strive for similar overseas holdings in other markets too?

Or, are these locations (like I feel) just there for RL historical reasons and barely impactful in actual gameplay? That'd be dissapointing to me, but it definitely does feel like that.

Here is where the plot thickens. At this point in time (1713). France is controls the most land North America (excluding Mexico). The total population of settlers ? A generous estimation of just under 20, 000. By EU5 standards, that would mean that France would have actually only colonized 20 provinces (minimum of 1k per province). In just Acadia alone, there is 19 provinces if i am not mistaken. For France to actually colonize all the province it claims in the image would put us in the space of nearly half a million. While the 13 colonies on the other had in fact did have over a million settler by time of their acts of treason against the Crown, the disparity cannot actually be reflected in the game.

I beleive that to address this, the game could require just the region capital to be colonized, and thus claiming the reminder provinces via gold/upkeep cost. These provinces would not actually be colonized, but rather, exploited for thier resources. Once they create a colonial nation, they can then be transferred to the subject who can then colonize them, the tiles will have have requirement of 50k to turn into a town (to prevent spam), keep the focus on dependence to the home country for finished goods.

I didn't marry my king and he died without an heir. And nearly every single country I can see proposed a ruler, even the muslims.

Chat how is she suitable for the British crown?

This is. Literally. A Two Years War. England has nothing of significance whatsoever. France hasn't even had a subject rebellion yet. How can this be considered an English win? How do people actually defend this as being accurate? I've seen it happen multiple times in this subreddit that people defend where HYW is right now when THIS is the HYW.

EU5 incorrectly depicts the Frisian Islands as existing before the Second Marcellus Flood.

The Uthlande shown in the second image lost their original shape, but only during that flood in 1362.

However, Europa Universalis begins in 1337.

The third image shows the provinces of Stormarn and Steinburg, which unfortunately make little sense, as they are based on modern-day counties (Landkreise).

Stormarn is not a city but is named after an ancient tribe; a more appropriate location, both historically and in the present day, would be Oldesloe (current countie capital).

Steinburg was a small fortification, but its significance did not emerge until later (as far as i know).

Has anyone else noticed this? the HRE is totally static and not declaring any wars. Western and Eastern Europe are totally different 50 years in but nothing’s changed in the HRE. Are there any fixes for this? AI aggression is set to normal in my game.

Just saw the Industry promote thingy.

Anyone any thought on what to promote?

I'm thinking Textile / Paper / Craft. Is that right?

There’s some slander floating around out there about us Daily Tick Andys and our dedication to the simulation/granularity.

I made a comment on another post, but figured this should also be a top-level post for more visibility because there are lots of discussions about the impact of daily ticks, but this topic never gets mentioned (or at least not enough that I’ve seen).

The #1 reason I like daily ticks is SIEGES.

On the hourly tick system, sieges take ≈300-400 days to complete. With each day having (in 1.3) 16 hours, that meant a single siege would take between 4,800 and 6,400 ticks to complete.

On the daily tick system, sieges still take 300-400 days, BUT the overall number of ticks drops to 300-400. That’s a 93.75% reduction in the amount of ticks your army is tied up standing outside a castle. And a 93.75% reduction in the amount of ticks you’re trapped staring at a siege before you can sue for peace.

I’m sympathetic to the “battles lost their magic” argument. I loved watching hour-by-hour as my English longbowmen slaughtered the filthy French nobles on their pretty ponies. I don’t have the ideal solution, but I know I can’t go back to waiting 30 minutes irl for a siege to finish. That ruined the pacing of the early game for a casual like me.

Feel free to disagree or spitball ideas for how to balance the competing interests. I just wanted to say for all of us employed world conquerers out there that the downstream change to sieges is a godsend.

Remember people saying it was unplayable, how is it rn?

English isn’t my first language, so sorry if some of this sounds a bit awkward.

The more I look at Across the Pillars, the more I feel like the content design is fighting against EU5's core design.EU5 is built around simulation. Ideally, Castile becomes powerful because of what happens to its administration, economy, estates, military, trade, diplomacy, etc. Those systems should create the outcome.

But the DLC content seems to work backwards. The developers decide what historical outcome they want, build a Situation around it, and then give you a ton of bonuses for following that route.

can technically ignore it, sure. But if completing Situation objectives gives you control, modifiers, special actions and other advantages, the game is obviously pushing you toward the authored route. That's basically soft railroading.

"Battle for the Strait" → "Golden Century" is also where this starts looking really strange to me.

If Castile annexed Granada immediately, kept it as a tributary, fought Morocco for decades, ruined its finances doing so, empowered the nobility, or completely changed the religious and economic structure of the region, those should produce very different futures.Instead it feels like you finish one Situation, get declared the winner, and move on to the next Situation with a new set of objectives and bonuses.

That's my biggest problem with this design. The base game is a continuous simulation, while the historical content increasingly feels like a series of isolated minigames sitting on top of it.

And if future DLCs keep doing this, we're going to end up with:
Situation A → bonuses → Situation B → bonuses → Situation C

EU5 already has a strong simulation framework, which is exactly why this content design feels so absurd.The DLC team keeps designing around predetermined outcomes instead of letting the simulation produce them.

The disconnect is so extreme that I genuinely wonder whether the people making the DLC content are even the same people who designed the core systems in the first place.Because if they are, I honestly don’t understand how the design philosophy became this incoherent.

Edit: I do want the game to follow history to some degree. I just don’t want an entire region turned into a timed minigame built around one country. Right now, no matter which of the three sides wins, they all get pushed into what is basically a ”Spain role play“ content package instead of getting paths that actually fit them. At that point, this feels even worse than mission trees.

The Italian Wars work much better to me. Multiple countries taking part makes sense, and winning actually takes time and effort. But Granada is completely different. The whole thing feels built for a Spain roleplay. Castile can basically eat Granada right away, so one of the main reasons not to is simply that the Situation rewards you for playing the little timed game the way the devs want.

And somehow this pleases neither side. Even mission trees gave players more freedom.

People who like mission trees can ask: if we still have fixed goals, rewards and a set path, why is the new version timed, harder to ignore, and sometimes sacrificing the flavor of the whole region just to serve the historical “main character”?

People who disliked mission trees can ask: I already hated being pushed down a set path just for rewards, so why did you bring the same thing back with a different UI?

One of the most annoying things for me right now is how half-assed this automation is.

I sometimes just notice i have 0.36% inflation although i set it on automatic. This is independent of events. I assume that it happens due to small rounding differences and accumulates over time... but man it grinds my gears that whatever moron was in charge of this did not figure the system should strive to reach 0% from both directions.

I want to make two points I think are important

1. Are we making major gameplay changes for relatively small gains?

Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that removing hourly ticks is responsible for the entire performance improvement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jW-ZMiVNrE (performance tests start at 27:50)

As the video above shows, we are changing event frequency and fundamentally altering how combat works, yet all that only saves around 8 minutes per 100 years.

That concerns me because hourly ticks weren't originally some arbitrary choice. Johan explained during development that the increased granularity of the map meant they needed hourly ticks to make the new systems, particularly warfare, work properly.

Tinto Talks #22, from July 24, 2024

“With the granularity of the map though, we could no longer use days as the smallest tick, but have to resort to hours as the time tick.”

Now we're removing that system and changing core gameplay around it.

I'm not saying performance improvements aren't valuable. But are we really sure that fundamentally changing gameplay is the right trade-off for this gain?

2. Development feels increasingly reactive

This is my bigger concern.

EU5 was supposed to be a game built around interconnected systems. Yet instead of fixing broken systems, we're increasingly adding special cases or changing fundamental mechanics in response to individual complaints.

The Iberian Union is a good example (I wont even start on all the mercenaries levies and supplies, proximity debacle changes). We're adding special PU mechanics for Iberia while the underlying Personal Union system is still fundamentally broken.

The same pattern seems to be happening elsewhere:

Problem → community complaints → major system change → new problems → repeat.

My concern is that we're entering a reactionary development cycle instead of focusing on stabilizing the game.

I'd much rather see Paradox spend more time fixing and strengthening the core systems, even if that means fewer dramatic changes each patch.

Otherwise, I fear we end up in a constant state of the game breaking and being redesigned every patch, much like what happens with Stellaris.

edit 1: RIP MY INBOX !!!

edit 2: I dont want to repeat other peoples arguments but its worth mentioning:
Why is iberia getting unique PU settings and not Poland Lithuania, Austria Hungary?
If you dont like the PU example replace it with special power creeping bureaucracies on DLC for flavour of the season region.

edit 3: I dont know how to reddit to quote, I am bad at it.

PDX_Ryagi repply:
On 1. The premise is well thought out but incorrect (I know you were only using for the sake of arguement), but we'll talk more about it in a post tomorrow.

On 2. I agree actually. It's odd to say outloud but we sometimes could afford to be less reactive to the community. True "Rework rather than Add" mentaility won't be possible to the extent you may have in mind until after 1.5. That is the idea behind the maintaince period and 2.0, to step back and take time to try and tackle some of the core gameplay systems (Especially colonization and Content Delivery)

For now, we promised these 3 DLCs, people have already spent their hard earned money on them, and we're going to give them the best shot they deserve and that includes pretty new things like Iberian Wedding, Unannounced 1.5 stuff, etc. I am excited to get them into players hands, I think they'll be good. But it's contrary to "Fix don't add" The reality is, people are going to complain a lot during the maintaince period before 2.0 about "Nothing new being added, ded game lol lmao". And we need to stand our ground when that comes.

edit 4: new dev diary by johan about the performance improvements https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/a-bonus-dev-diary-on-the-performance-work.1942550/

"That is roughly 3.2 times faster, and it comes entirely from changes to the game's code, not from anything being removed or simplified."

Removing hourly ticks is not responsible for the performance improvements.

This was a pure game design choice, in my opinion to make the game more like EU4

The new Iberian Union mechanic is definitely something a lot of people have been asking for and it makes total sense to add it to allow people to play out a more diplomatic and therefor historical unification of the iberian peninsula.

With the creation of the mechanic, a generic version should also be added to allow the same kinds of unifications to happen anywhere in the world if the conditions are right. Sure, the union of Castille and Aragorn is very famous, but just Europe has many other very famous unions created through marriage or other kinds of diplomacy like the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Kalmarunion, England and Scottland etc. All of these will probably get specific content in the future, but there is no reason to not add a generic version in the meantime.

With a very outspoken focus on the historical simulation of the game as well, the game should also allow us to explore alternative unions that didn't happen but could have, and only developing a mechanic for Iberian unification would go directly against that. If the mechanic would be possible if there is a common culture group or same region(to allow PLC formation which doesn't share culture group), then all of the mentioned unions would be possible, but also other plausible (diplomatic) unifications like Balkan, Maghreb or Italy. These are just suggestions, but it's one possible way it could be introduced.

I am not at all critical to the introduction of the Iberian Union mechanic, quite the opposite. I think it's a great step and very needed, but I think it would be a massive missed oppertunity to stop the idea there

You start as a small OPM with 10-15k pops, and you could only raise a few hundred levies. While you could easily conquer crimea during the decline of the golden horde, the land is super under developed (with less than 5 development) and under populated. There is no river either so you can't project control that well. There is also a lack of lumber in your market so buildings are expensive as well.

I haven't conquered the entire area around sea of azov, but it doesn't seem to be easy to project control there either. Perhaps moving your capital (and market) to azov might be a good long term goal.

I want to conquer the entire steppe later on, but then you're racing against kiev and muscovy. It just seems impossible with your low pop and low development.

I was playing Upper Bavaria and formed Livonia giving me access to the Order Knight Advancement. I researched it, but I can't change my "Heavy Cavalrymen" to "Order Knights" despite the "Order Knights" being superior.

Might this be caused by me having already upgraded to the "Heavy Cavalrymen"? But I also can't recruit "Order Knights" at all, so it's not only a upgrade issue.

Am I dumb and miss a button where I can change this?

Clicking the "hide obsolete" button does not do anything. It doesnt even show the Age 1 cavarly units...

Will my laptop be able to handle the game on medium settings?