Europa Universalis IV News

Hey all! Vasi here -- I’m stepping in for Ryagi this week to bring you our latest mod spotlight: Aurora Regnorum.

What would have happened if an isolated Alaska had been visited by Europeans much earlier?

This is a niche but intriguing alt history mod, featuring a unique map and bringing richly detailed flavour to an overlooked region. Difficulty options are also embedded in the mod, for those wanting a variable experience.

[h3]>> Aurora Regnorum on the Steam workshop << [/h3]

Read below for a full write-up on the mod by its creator, SeagullSox.

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In the mid-1300’s a revitalized Khanate had emerged like a phoenix, reuniting many of the fragments of Genghis Khan’s shattered legacy. From Crimea to Korea, the Second Mongol empire ruled with an iron fist. The Khan, having ambitions for a great and prosperous Beijing as his capital, wanted people of all kinds to be forced to contribute to his plans. Tens of thousands of people on the fringe of the empire were forcefully immigrated to the outskirts of Beijing. Slavs, Fins and even Arabs were brought for their forced labor to the capital.

At first, it was tolerable, but once the Khan died, his successor had a different tone. He was far more oppressive and barbarous than his father. In a stroke of complete providence, the immigrants rebelled successfully, taking the city of Beijing. But with the Mongol Horde soon reinforcing, they knew their demise was imminent. In a show of logistic and diplomatic genius, the leaders of the rebellion were able to acquire ships and sailors, where they sailed into the night as far as they could from their vengeful oppressors. Sailing past Korea and then Japan, the refugee armada didn’t see land for a long time. Finally they came upon a distant and cold land.

Aurora Regnorum is an alt-history mod about an isolated Alaska that gets visited by a wave of very early Europeans. It explores what the clash between cultures and religions might look like. What power struggles would emerge? What diplomatic alliances might result? Who would lead Alaska’s future; the Native Alaskan people or the Strangers from the West?



[h2]Regions[/h2]

So far, there are 6 regions that are fully developed and playable. There are a bunch more provinces and potential regions to the southeast, but that area is much earlier in its development and is a lot less stable/playable. The Trade all generally flows towards modern-day Anchorage, as this is where Alaska’s population has flourished in our timeline. Each of the regions are generally unique.

• Kodiak: Semi Isolated from the action, Kodiak will typically be dominated by the Russian-tag of Kadyak unless otherwise challenged.
  
• Kenai and Anchorage: These regions are by far the busiest and where you will find the most traditional EU4 experience.
  
• Susitna and Glenallen: These regions begin very empty, but are intended to be colonized by whoever and create an opportunity for growth.
  
• Prince William Sound: This is my personal favorite region. PWS is all about trade and naval maneuvering. Most provinces here are hard to fight on but their goods produced make them worth seeking after.
  
• Southeast mega-region: As I said before, this area is underdeveloped. The terrain will look unfinished but I hope that it is at least functional enough to work as a colonization avenue.
  

[h2]Religion[/h2]

The Catholics have formed their own mini-papal system, as they are far too disconnected from the mainland to rely on them. The Orthodox are here as well and there is one province that is controlled by a Shia nation. Totemism obviously makes a comeback but I also incorporated Shamanism, using assets with permission from the Arctics Expanded team. There are basically two groups of native so far, the Alutiiq (related to the Inuit) who are shamanist, and the Dene (related to the more common North American Native American), who are Totemist.



[h2]Countries[/h2]

While I love all the countries that I’ve made here, some have a lot more content than others.

• Afognak: Afognak is a rough start to be sure. If victorious, it’s designed to replace Kadyak as the dominant Kodiak tag. If Afognak survives its initial wars with Kadyak, it will easily be a dominant power. Afognak also follows Shamanism.
  

• Kadyak: This tag is more in line historically with colonial Russia. Exploitation of land and people for the sake of their own is a key principle.
  

• Svatosk: Maybe the most unique tag, Svatosk is built to peacefully integrate with the natives. It uses a mostly functional event system that is designed to build trust with their two Alutiiq neighbors, once trust is high enough, Svatosk can peacefully vassalize them.
  
• 
  

• Velreiz: This nation happens to occupy maybe the most important province in the mod. There will be blood over the Kahtnu River.
  
• Kenaitze: Velreiz’s rival, Kenaitze has maybe the most content in the mod.
  

• Kordovaa: Only three unique missions, but this is for some reason my favorite tag in the whole thing. It is definitely the sassiest tag and prefers to use its diplomatic savvy to dominate the economy.
  

• Nanwalek: This country is very odd as I never made a mission tree for it, yet it has the most unique events by far. This is because it has a lot of events related to the Afognaq-Kadyak struggle and their role in it. Also Bigfoot lives there.
  

[h2]Unique Events[/h2]

• War of the Kahtnu River: I created this event to cause an initial shake up between Velreiz and Kenaitze. If you play either of these countries, you will be pressured to go to war in the first year or so. Very similar to “The Surrender of Maine”
  
• The Pirates of Kalgin: I really loved making this event. Basically if Velreiz is losing the War of the Kahtnu River, the unique island tag of Kalgin will break free from Velreiz. It is the most unique tag in the game: A Native Alaskan, yet Catholic, Pirate Republic. If you are playing as Velreiz when the event fires you will get the option to play as them.
  

• The Nantiinaq: Fun little event chain. Currently only works if you are Nanwalek, but essentially it's about Bigfoot. This is because of the modern-day lore around the region of Port Graham, Alaska.
  

[h2]Province Names[/h2]

It is worth stating the amount of effort I went into to get accurate place names. I spent a lot of time trying to find the original Denaina, Alutiiq and Russian names of these places. It was super fun but very challenging, but there always came a time where I had to improvise. But there are hundreds of dynamic province names which focus on Alutiiq, Dene, Estonian/Finnish, and Russian cultures.



[h2]Great Projects[/h2]

Maybe my favorite part of this mod was making Great Projects. There are 5 and I love them all very much. My wife helped me greatly with the pictures.

• Fort Puyurniq: This is to give the Alutiiqs a chance to survive on Afognak. It is basically just a really cheap fort as they don’t start with much money. Completely fictional.
  
• Cathedral of the Holy Resurrection: This is based on the real building that exists today in the city of Kodiak, Alaska. Something for the Orthodox nations to use.
  
• The Great Longhouse: This is another fictional building, but is essentially a way to get more goods produced in a central Kenai.
  

• Redoubt of Saint Nicholas: Based on a real nearby fort, “Fort Nikolaevskaia, built in 1899”, this great project essentially backs up the lore of Velreiz settling up the Kenai River.
  

• Mount Susitna: My favorite Great Project, the only one that is non-fictional that is related to Native Alaskans. There is a ton of lore on this mountain in oral native tradition, and I find it fascinating.
  

[h2]Spicy Options[/h2]

• Hard Mode: This is based on Anbennar’s Great Conquerors feature. With a world this small, you may find yourself being too dominant too quickly. I added this to give an extra dose of challenge.
  
• 
  

• Vinland Challenge: This option enabled Brimirhavn, a fierce offshoot of a wildly successful Vinland. Basically you are enabling a timeline where Vinland never died, but instead manifest destiny’d itself all the way to your doorstep; and they don’t like you.
  

Finally, a note on the size of the playable world so far: it’s small. It’s probably around ⅓ the size of europe. Throwing in the southeast area it is probably about half the size. I tried to implement this mod into the normal EU4 map but it was complicated and I felt really dispassionate about it. Basically I hope that people have a fun time with this mod despite its small size. I think there are some good games to be had here. Thanks for taking a look at Aurora Regnorum!

Special thanks to my wonderful wife for helping out on a bunch of the art!

Faithfully yours,
SeagullSox


https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3169715493

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Conquerors! [/h3]

The official Conquistador Platypus Plushie for Europa Universalis has arrived, and he’s hoping to strike gold in his conquest of your shelf (and your heart).

Equipped with his signature morrión and arquebus, the Conquistador plushie embodies might & cunning in equal measure, and is the perfect companion for any daring explorer with a flair for the historical.

The EUIV Conquistador Plushie is available for a strictly limited time, so be sure to act quick & don’t miss out!

[h2]Get yours here![/h2]

Hey folks! Ryagi here, today features our first ever multiplayer focused mod spotlight! We’ll be taking a deep dive into a toolset initially created for TurboLarp's Grandest Lan.

Now you might be thinking “I’m not playing at the Lan, so what good does this mod do for me?” well that dear EU4 player is where I invite you to let your imaginations run wild! Especially if you are interested in EU4 Multiplayer. A toolset such as this can prove hugely useful for curating the perfect multiplayer environments, and enhancing your MP experiences.

Figuring out how best to utilize this toolset for yourself may be easier if we give you some examples. So let's go ahead and take a look at how this mod was used for this years Grandest Lan, and from that hopefully your ideas will run wild! I’ll let Game Master (And pro modder) Lunar take it away:
[h2]---------[/h2]



We have just wrapped up this year’s edition of the Grandest LAN. For those of you who have not heard the name yet - imagine a weekend-long multiplayer game of EU4, but it’s hosted in a real, historical castle and you live next to all the other participants, forced to navigate all the diplomatic challenges facing your country by interacting with other participants in-person, in an environment where one mistake could cost you and your team your country… Sounds cool? Well, that’s the Grandest LAN for you!

To add some flavor and make the organization easier the event uses a special mod, and so today - as a slight off-ramp from what Mod Spotlights are about usually - my name is Lunar and I will be your tour guide through the Grandest LAN 2024 mod, the thought behind it and how you - someone who might not be interested in LANs - might take away a thing or two from it.

First as a disclaimer: although I am writing this summary, GLP was a collaborative effort with the heavy bulk of the work being done by my co-GM in @gasior, and I am just representing it, having been one of the Game Masters during the event.



To start: the mod isn’t your usual expansion mod, in a sense that we are not trying to substantially change the vanilla experience by adding new mission trees, events and such. Instead, the mod focuses on three pillars:

• Game Master toolkit - using the custom GUIs introduced in King of Kings we’ve created a panel available only to Game Masters, that allowed us to interact with the game world without having to rehost the game, enabling things like doing “save edits” to countries that players would relocate into, controlling the scenario and others.
  
  
• Expanding the in-castle RP scenario - with the theme of this year’s event being vampires, we wanted to add some cool flavor to the game that would bring the players closer to the role-play scenario as it was transpiring in the castle, this included a new religion, a series of AI countries that could yield the team who bested them an artifact granting them a cool modifier, a “big boss” country that the teams would have to band up against and many others - all controlled from the Game Master’s PCs
  
  
• Statistics! Since we all love cool numbers, we’ve added a bunch of new automated ways to track in-game happenings to later share it with players at the end of the campaign.
  

So let’s go through them one by one, shall we?

[h2]The Scenario[/h2]
The theme of this year’s event was vampires, and so the storyline followed the “vampires of the new bloodline” (i.e. the participants) establishing themselves as rulers of their countries, and jointly deciding between following various vampiric ideals and philosophies.

The first of these choices came when the ideals of vampiric inquisition came to grow in strength across the continent:


The Inquisition (later renamed to Order of the Dragon as it became formalized and overcame its pariah status) is a religion loosely inspired by Reformed, which allows players to switch between focuses that carried both heavy reward and heavy penalties:




On top of that, it allowed the oh-so-precious opportunity to impale your own advisors and watch them suffer, in exchange for a hefty sum of mana points (with a 15 years-long cooldown because blood is tastier when you give yourself the time to savor it)



Many decades later, in the wake of the Age of Absolutism, a new threat has emerged in the Americas, that the players now had to choose how to deal with:



The powerful nation of Enoch (played by one of our GMs), in spite of its small size, proved to be a formidable opponent that required the players to spend a long-time preparing a grand coalition before being able to best them, and the war nevertheless costed millions of lives



I will leave a lot of the nitty-gritty details of the scenario unmentioned here, as at the end of the day, this part of the mod was crafted specifically for the needs of the event, but nevertheless what I’d love you - the reader - to take away from this is that variety is the spice of life, and it actually doesn’t take that much to expand and adjust EUIV to add the things like I’ve described here. Be that new countries, religions, idea groups; if there is something that you think would be cool to add to the game I encourage you to just try and do it! Even if you don’t have much modding experience, at the very least you’ll learn something new and cool in the process :)

[h2]Blood Feuds[/h2]
A major highlight of the event, that proved to be quite enjoyed by the participants in the end was the newly-added mechanic of Blood Feuds. In essence: Blood Feud is a challenge a country can issue to another to ask it for a 1vs1 duel. The catch? Both sides need to agree for the war to start, it’s much costlier to take lands and both sides are compensated in 75% of the manpower lost during the war once it's over.



Wars in EU4 MP are costly and often seen as very risky, so we’ve added this mechanic as a way to encourage players to engage in “for fun” wars where they get to show off the strength of their countries and their own ability to outmaneuver the opponent while removing the frequent risk of falling way too behind other countries, which instead would elect to just grow their economies and military in peace.
[h2]The Artifacts[/h2]
Last aspect of the scenario that I will mention here is the mechanic of artifacts. Spread all over the world, from Tasmania to Nordkapp several vampiric domains stood, guarding ancient vampiric relics said to give their possessor a great power~~



Each of these domains posed a challenge to players to find them, and conquer. The victor would both obtain the physical form of the relic as well as an in-game modifier for as long as the relic remained in their control.

Screencap from Florryworry’s LAN coverage (Florry pls no kill)



[h2]The GM Control Panel[/h2]


A typical EUIV multiplayer game tends to be split into sessions. A community might gather once a week to play for a few hours, and then continue the week after, giving ample time for any modifications that might be necessary to keep the game running.
Having no such time we developed an in-game control panel, accessible only to the GM countries, that allowed us to interact with the game’s world however it was needed.



The control panel served no specific, constrained purpose. Instead, it was meant to allow us to react to pretty much whatever was happening in the game.

A team has lost their country and now they need to relocate onto an AI nation? Sure! We can add provinces to their new country, clear corruption and all the bad things that AI might’ve done to it to allow them to rejoin onto it without having to restart the game

A team has struck a deal with one of the NPCs to help with converting their nation to the Inquisition? We can help with that!

The players have voted during a Conclave (a Player Council) that they should no longer be bound by the technology requirements in order to form countries like Germany or Egypt? We have a button for it!

The control panel enabled an extensive ability to influence the state of a country. What in the past would usually take a rehost and very stressful save-editing that still could turn out to have some problems, with the control panel we can do it in just a minute, without interrupting the campaign for other players.



[h2]Extra statistics[/h2]
The possibly most minor and niche feature of the LAN mod, that nevertheless I think is worth mentioning, was the addition of extra statistics.
Some of you might already be aware of tools like PDXTools or Skanderbeg, which allow you to extract information from the save file to analyze the progress of the campaign, but we wanted to go a step further.

Using a combination of scripted effects with a yearly biyearly on_action we are able to export a lot of new variables into the savefile that can then be extracted for it for our enjoyment, which is how we are able to say that, for example, the team playing Byzantium (led by none other but AbsoluteHabibi himself) exploited dev of its provinces 80 times just in the last 30 years of the campaign alone, on top of executing 10 barrages and recruiting 2200 new regiments, among many other fun facts :)



[h2]So what’s in it for me?[/h2]

It… depends! The Grandest LAN Mod was crafted primarily with the LAN itself in mind, and it’s very probable that it just won’t fit with how you usually play your games. With that said, there are three things that I’d love if you could take away from this spotlight:

Firstly, that LANs are really cool! We put a lot of effort each year into coming up with ways to make each new campaign feel different, and less so like your usual run-of-the-mill multiplayer campaign, so if you haven’t had a chance to join any of the previous events, I greatly encourage you to consider it the next time Grandest LAN returns.

Secondly, and this part goes mainly towards MP players and hosts: I wanted to show that there’s a lot of tools you can use to make organizing your games smoother. Even if you don’t play in campaigns where having a separate Game Master country that could make use of our Control Panel is feasible, you may still want to add some extra logging to the savefiles to help with detecting potential abusers and cheaters (a problem that’s unfortunately growing in the community). But it goes beyond that as well! If you find yourself playing in a group that relies on fancy formulas to calculate the strength of each player country, you can now aid yourself in that process by exporting necessary variables directly from the game, rather than having to rely on manual input or faulty calculations. There’s a lot of small scripting work that, when done right, could save you tons of effort and stress.

Thirdly though, and perhaps more importantly, that it doesn’t take massive mods that change and greatly build on every single aspect of the game for you to have a chance at improving your enjoyment of the EU4. The modding system provided to us by the developers is very wide and extensive, and even though it might be confusing at times, and solutions to some problems won’t be obvious at a moment’s notice, if you start small you too can recraft and remake the game to your liking, even if you have no prior modding experience.
So, if nothing else, may this spotlight serve as a set of ideas that you can draw inspiration from for your own work. Maybe there’s some scenario that you’d love to play out with your friends, DnD style? Or maybe you like our idea for artifacts? the duel system? the extra statistics?

If you answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions, then I feel blessed to have been given the chance to write this piece ^^

Thanks for your attention, and I’ll see you all around!

- Lunar AKA Jarvin

[h2]---------[/h2]

Thank you Lunar, we hope that this look into the toolset gave you some ideas for how your next big multiplayer can be run. Whether it's just you and a few friends, or a big organized game. We encourage you to give it a shot!

Until next time!

You can find the toolset here
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3084307694

Ahoy! Ryagi here. This spotlight will be a little bit special, today we're not covering 1 mod but 3! All three of these mods will be from Modathon Season 3, which took place throughout late August (2024) and concluded September 8th.

If you're unfamiliar with these Modathons, they are essentially game jams, but for EUIV mods. Teams of 3-5 people organize themselves and make a mod in just a couple of weeks. These mods are then voted on by the modders and community, and the "Winners" given awards!

[h2]The Awards for Season 3 are as follows:[/h2]

Cookie taxer

• 1st place Overall Winner
  
• General Mechanics
  
• Ooh Shiny! (Tied)
  
• Innovative
  

Last Breath: The Sunrise Invasion

• 1st Place: Alternate History
  

Indica Universalis - Shadows of Zomia

• 1st Place Regional Flavor
  
• Ooh Shiny! (Tied)
  

Wacky Events

• Awards: Meme Worthy
  

Mining and Ores reworked

• Overall Runner up
  
• 2nd place: General Mechanics
  

Shattered England

• 2nd place Alternate history
  
• Ooh Shiny! (Tied)
  

Today well be looking deeper at some of these winners: Cookie Taxer, Last Breath, and Wacky events. So without further Ado lets first take a look at Cookie Taxer first!
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Cookie Taxer

EU4 is a fantastic game of conquest, colonization, and state-building that we all know and love. But what if it was something more than that? What if it was also an idle game? What if the function of the empire was not to improve the lives back in the metropolis, but instead to produce cookies in ridiculous volumes, with a network of production stretching across the globe?

[h3]Cookies[/h3]
Cookie Taxer adds a new currency, Cookies. To gain a cookie, navigate to your economy tab, where you will see a big cookie. Clicking on this cookie gives you a cookie!

The cookies in the top-left go up with every click!

Now, you can keep clicking on this for days on end while paused, and give your hand a permanent disability. But wait, did you forget you have a country? A country full of people and land that can surely be harnessed for the glorious cause of cookie production!

[h3]Buildings[/h3]
There’s so much unused land in your country. Of course, this can be used to put down churches, workshops, and marketplaces, among other buildings. But that gives us ducats, and we aren’t here for ducats, are we? We’re here for cookies!

In the building menu, there are 9 new buildings. These cost cookies to build, but instead of giving you a one-time cookie increase like the clicking, they instead increase your monthly cookie income.

All 9 buildings, with custom artwork inspired by Cookie Clicker!

• Cursors: The cheapest building, where you employ hilariously underpaid workers to click the big cookie for you once a month.
  
• Grandma: An old lady, one with a lifetime of experience baking and a true mastery of the cookie form.
  
• Farm: A new agricultural revolution. Instead of growing cookie ingredients, cut out the middleman and grow the cookies directly!
  
• Mine: The earth’s formation was the ultimate oven, and the crust contains massive veins of cookie ore to unearth.
  
• Factory: A bit early for the industrial revolution, but nothing drives innovation faster than cookies.
  
• Bank: Cookies have become the primary currency of your state, so of course, your mints can regulate it!
  
• Temple: God finally answers your priests’ prayers!
  
• Wizard Tower: But sometimes, God isn’t enough, and you have to take the supernatural into your own hands.
  
• Shipment: EU4 is a game about colonialism, so of course, your overseas holdings will contribute to your cookie Empire.
  

Each building costs an order of magnitude more than the previous, with shipments costing 5.1 Billion cookies to build. Building costs also scale exponentially, increasing each time you build one. They are also limited by building slots as per normal, so true cookie scaling involves actually playing EU4 and expanding your country. Which, that must be really difficult now that your entire country is optimized for cookies and not actually playing the game, isn’t it? If only there was something else to spend cookies on, that would help the country...

[h3]Upgrades[/h3]
Upgrades cost a thousand cookies each, and also scale in their costs with each level. But they are well worth the investment, and will skyrocket the power of your country!

• Cookie Trebuchets: the enemy morale plummets when they see your forces feasting on cookies.
  
• Cookie Rations: and all the while, your troops are always ready and excited to fight, from the sugar rush!
  
• Steadfast Tax Regime: Cookie production is lucrative, so why not tax the extra income your people have now?
  
• Promote Sweet Immigration: Wages paid in cookies make foreigners eager to migrate and enlist.
  
• Hegemony of the Grandmatriarchs: Who would oppose their integration into the cookie regime? I wouldn’t!
  

Each upgrade gives a small bonus to the relevant modifier, but can be upgraded up to level 128. If you can afford it, your armies will be invincible, you will easily be able to afford it, enemy provinces will fold with just a touch, and your expansion will go entirely unopposed.

Clearly, our conquest has focused on a single building above all others...

[h3]Province Modifiers[/h3]
Your income scales linearly, but the cost of buildings and upgrades scale exponentially. So, eventually, you’ll simply be unable to afford anything, right?

Scattered across Europe are special provinces, carrying exponential buffs of your own! These modifiers need to be liberated from their ai rulers, who simply do not understand cookies like you do. And when controlled, will give significant buffs to your income. Some double the income from individual buildings (stacking multiplicatively), while others provide special bonuses of their own. Thousand fingers is one to watch out for, as you institute mandatory clicking during lunch breaks in every building. In addition, several upgrades provide a bonus for both grandmas and another building: after all, the elderly have wisdom to share, if only you are willing to listen. And a few other modifiers increase cookie production globally, by varying amounts.

Our advisors insist that we go to war with Bohemia. Not for the gold mine, or the great project in Prague, but instead this mountainous backwater, that holds the most valuable treasure of all.

[h3]A Note on Math and Loading Times[/h3]
Cookie Taxer supports cookie counts up to 999 undecillion. EU4 itself maximizes most numbers at 2.1 million. So there are hundreds of millions of lines of code supporting the mathematics this mod requires. Yes, you read that right. None of this actually causes any noticeable lag while playing the game, but it does massively increase loading times. If you are stuck on “creating checksum” for 5 minutes or more, it’s the game frontloading the mathematics!

[h3]Our Team[/h3]
CzerstfyChlep - UI and mod base
Xorme: Art
Sol_InvictusXLII - Math systems, buildings
LordVarangian - Events, province modifiers
Stiopa - Modifiers, metascripting

[h3]Get the Mod[/h3]
The mod is currently available on Steam Workshop.
Get it here! -------------

Last Breath: The Sunrise Invasion

Hello folks. Somehow, you managed to find your way to the spotlight for our mod: Last Breath The Sunrise Invasion. Since you are here, allow us to give you a little introduction to what this mod is about, what it contains and how it came to be.

[h3]There was an idea[/h3]
What if everyone died? Well, maybe not everyone, as that would make for a boring game. But what if the Plague, a.k.a The Black Death, was even worse than it was? What if, instead of killing ~1/3 of the population, it killed up to 90% of the people everywhere it struck? Surely, a world that has gone through such an apocalypse would look quite a bit different than the one we know from history books.

[h3]Plans upon plans[/h3]
With that rough idea, we began carving into finer edges, figuring out which regions would be the most and least affected and pondering what impact such a catastrophic event would have on the remaining populations. Very soon, we realised that the scope was a bit too grand for the relatively short duration of Modathon and thus, most of the world would remain only at those rougher edges. Nonetheless, we still tried our best to communicate ideas we came up with in at least some limited form. So, lets talk about what those were.

With so many people dying, the societies as they were would be utterly upended on all levels. The most immediately on-map visible impact is the collapse of centralised governments. Nearly all early medieval power structures were obliterated, and the people who survived organised themselves into small, tribe-like societies. Of course, not all regions were affected equally; some even managed to go through the ordeal relatively unscathed. And over time, some managed to rebuild.


Map of Europe, Maghreb and western-Asia in 1666

Of course, this wasnt the only change that occurred. The events of the Plague caused many people to lose all hope, including their hope in the divine that was supposedly protecting them. This mass crisis of faith was only further compounded by the collapse of religious networks, be it the Catholic Church in Europe or the Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East. This led to the religions fragmenting into many local denominations, with some people even abandoning the Abrahamic faiths altogether and resorting to the faiths of their ancestors. You can see this effect being most pronounced in places where the Abrahamic religions were still new and not yet deeply entrenched in tradition.

The depopulation of the Old World also means that the freed-up land is up for grabs, so to speak. Be it by the surviving locals, the reforming empires of the Far East or the civilisations in the Far West, who are enjoying a much more pleasant existence without European colonisation. And it is exactly the uncharted continent that is serving as the major civilisation centre, remaining wholly unaffected by the devastating Plague. Of course, nothing is perfect, and these nations will still have plenty of things to deal with. And perhaps, some of them might be inclined to look to the east and go figure out where the Sun Rises.

Map of colonial regions in Europe

[h3]Asia in Brief[/h3]
Asia is one of the regions that saw the fewest changes for the initial release, but we still tried to change things a bit to suit our vision. The Plague originated in Central-East Asia, so it was the first place to get, but also one that had the longest time to rebuild. Already, mostly stable centralised powers are a clear sign of this. Chinese Warlords managed to consolidate the lands of the Heavenly Kingdom, though there is still some hot debate over who exactly should hold the Mandate. Over in the southern drylands, quick and decisive political manoeuvring led to the restoration of the Persian Empire in the vacuum left behind by the collapsing Illkhanate and subsequent Plague. Speaking of collapsing, the Mongol Empire saw an even sharper decline, quickly fracturing into multiple small independent hordes.

[h3]Europe[/h3]
Back in Europe, things are still dire. Kingdoms lie in ruin, the lands of former civilisations are barren and slowly being reclaimed by nature, and despair hangs in the air. Yet, there are people who have lived through hell and now face the challenge of restoring their lands to their former glory and beyond.

[h3]The Highlands[/h3]
One group of survivors who managed to weather the seeming apocalypse are the hardy people of the Scottish Highlands. And while the effects of the Plague were still disastrous, causing the Kinrick o´ Scotland to collapse and fracture, the people didnt lose faith.

Well, to be more factual, many people lost faith in the Catholic Church due to them not being able to stop the spread of diseases and death no matter how many tithes and prayers were offered. Instead, people began to search for hope elsewhere and eventually found it in the practices of their forefathers. Soon, newly raised druids started spreading the restored faith throughout the land.

As the Plague receded, the Celts started to rebuild and organise. Soon, three main federations of tribes rose to prominence: The Islands, The Highlands and The Lowlands.
While the worst is already over, the road ahead will undoubtedly be long and paved with struggles.

Preview of the start of the game event in highland countries. There are quite a few issues to tackle.

Of course, overcoming great struggles should yield a great reward. To help you with that, a new mission tree will take you from dealing with the initial issues troubling your nation to reclaiming the lands formerly settled by Anglo-Saxons for their rightful Celtic owners.

Preview of the initial mission tree available to highland countries.

[h3]The Rest of Europe[/h3]
There are, of course, other places worth noting. The Basque, who managed to survive secluded in the Apennines, began spreading across the lands formerly held by Frankish and Iberian kingdoms. The Poles, who almost wouldnt noticed something happened, if it wasnt for the welcomed lack of German neighbours. In the Baltics, holdouts of Knightly Orders, who came there in preparation for the Biblical Apocalypse, which is sure to come any day now. And in the north, Odins shadow looms once again as the locals rejected the god on the cross, who clearly wasnt powerful enough to protect anyone.

[h3]The New? World[/h3]
But what about the lands across the ocean? You may ask. Well, the good news is that the Plague doesnt know how to swim, and thus, the continent was spared of all the death and suffering it caused in Eurasia. In other good news, dangerous sea journeys into the unknown are very low on the list of priorities for the surviving Hispaniards and Portuguese, so there are definitely no European colonies anywhere to be seen. The indigenous civilisations were left to their own devices. In the south, the Incan Empire has mostly consolidated its rule over the Andes and is enjoying somewhat of a golden age, in their case, quite literally. Further north, the Aztecs reign supreme, expanding their control over tribes far and wide. Only time will tell whether Doom or Glory awaits their empire. Meanwhile, the natives of the planes are mostly content with their migratory lives. And tho some unifications occurred in certain places; they dont seem to have grand imperial ambitions.

[h3]The High Kingdom of Vinland[/h3]
Speaking of the far north, there might be some Europeans, after all. In this timeline, the expeditions of Lief Erikson were significantly more successful; and with wise shamas prophesying a great catastrophe, many more people travelled to seek life in Vinland. And so, the colonies grew and spread across the north-eastern coast of this new continent. Over time, the clans established a system to aid each other in the struggles far away from their old home; Althing of Thanes and High King to oversee it.

Map of Vinland. Huh, the colours look familiar.

That worked well for a while. But as with all such institutions, this one, too, eventually has to face some turmoil. The sudden loss of contact with the homeland, the deepening relations with natives or internal power struggles are just a few of the issues the High Kingdom is facing.

Preview of generic Vinland mission tree.

[h2]Archaeology[/h2]

Hello everyone, Lichark here! I’m thrilled to introduce the Archaeology feature weve been crafting for our mod. Weve put a lot of care and effort into it, and I cant wait to share all the exciting details with you.

[h3]The idea behind Archaeology[/h3]

It might only be me but once I read the mod’s premise by Saxon I immediately started thinking about the Horizon and Fallout game series and how in those games you venture through a world that flourished before but now its only remaining signs are buried or overgrown by nature. I wanted to capture the same sense of adventure and discovery within the limits of the game.

The idea was to create another versatile narrative tool that’s not just a simple event, decision or mission but can interact with the aforementioned systems. For example we could set up a mission that the player can only complete if an Archaeology Site was finished in a certain way or a decision that the player can only take if it’s in a certain phase of excavation.

[h3]Gameplay Design of Archaeology[/h3]

From a gameplay perspective, I wanted to mimic how the Monuments function in the game. What I mean by this is that each time you upgrade a Monument, random events can fire during its construction or in some cases, something specific can happen once the upgrading process is finished.
Archaeology Sites have five tiers. The tiers represent your progress in exploring/excavating the site. To advance, for example, from tier 1 to tier 2, you have to invest resources to start the process. Once your loyal subject starts working on the site, you’ll get progress reports or even narrative events periodically, and you can choose how to progress further. Reaching tier 5 requires significant resources, but generally speaking, every Archaeology Site has some kind of worthwhile reward it gives you upon completion. Among (us) the possible rewards are national modifiers, buildings, gold, monuments, and much more ( is possible but we havent had the time to implement them ).

( Some events from the Knife of Brutus Archaeology Site )
[h3]Visual Design of Archaeology[/h3]

As I mentioned above, Monuments were a huge influence from a gameplay and even visual perspective. In my modding projects outside of the marathon I always tried to blend the stuff I add to the game with the already existing UI so it feels natural.

Because of that I had to find an appropriate place and design for it. After some (failed) iterations I settled on the bottom of the Buildings tab of the Provincial Window. It had some nice looking free space waiting to be filled with content.
From then on, I just modified some buttons from the base game to fit in the new interface and changed the background to a stylish brown and added a banner above it all with an amphora icon for looks ( that I later modified to act as a sort of tooltip icon).



Due to time constraints, the unique pictures embedded in the tier buttons were all generated using AI image tools. While it’s awesome that we have access to these tools, I would have designed these icons myself if we had the time. They look good on their own, but you lose a lot of control over the art direction and finer details when using image generation. While it’s possible to correct some things when using images that are this small, they can still look out of place.

[h3]Last Breath[/h3]
While, of course, we are slightly disappointed that we could not bring in more flavour and had to restrict ourselves to only small regions, we are overall happy with how this project turned out. For most of our team, this was the first large project, and for some of us, even the first proper EU4 project. We got to try new things we hadnt played with before, so it was certainly a valuable learning experience for all of us.

Wed like to thank everyone for giving our mod a try and enjoying it. Wed also like to thank Chewy, Minnator, and the rest of the staff for organising the Modathon.

-------------


Wow.
Hello World!

We, the Wacky Events team, in order to create a quite silly mod, establish madness,
and insure the instability of EU4 players minds, with the blessings of the Modathon admin team,
do ordain and establish this Insanity of Europa Universalis modding.

I am Cetai, one of the crew presenting you the product of 2 weeks of hard work and procrastination.
The process behind the creation of our mod went something like this:
Our veteran team of modders have debated long and hard about the type of mod we wanted to create, from full movies added to events
to the Italian Wars. Then we just slapped on the silly hat.

But enough of the behind the scenes stuff, lets jump right into the mod!


So, what are the Wacky events? Or precisely, where are they? A great question, dear reader. The scope of the mod
allowed all of us to work independently on stuff, and pursue different carriers in acting and music.
Initially, the idea of moving pictures was the target, however we realized early that in two weeks this would be quite impossible to do properly.
This lead to the change of focus to individual events, while Kyhler and Sealand began to work on a fantastic musical piece never before seen in EU4.
A truly unique wonder.


To me, these two weeks were a great opportunity to learn more about custom_windows and interface modding in general.
What came out of it? The "Drinks around the world" window, where the sense of expolration meets the haphazard throwing of icons on each other.
But as with the theme of this mod, the music gives clues where one should go.


Meanwhile, the rest of our team werent slacking off. There are almost 50 unique events inside our mod, like the legendary horse Glitterhoof appearing from the CK series, the Japanese becoming Fetishist upon discovering Manga, to Julius Ceasar returning via timey-wimey stuff.

And of course, the wackiest of all, the random switch of countries. Make sure to discover them all!



With this, I close the curtain upon the Wacky Events mod for the Modathon 2024 Season 3 series. Thank you for your attention, and may all the Gods bless you!
-------------

Outro

Ryagi back to wrap things up for us. You can find all 3 of the mods showcased here today on steam workshop:

• Cookie Taxer
• Last Breath: The Sunrise Invasion
• Wacky Events

And Links for the Modathon award winners we couldnt cover in full today:

• Shattered England
• Mining and Ores Reworked
• Indica Universalis - Shadows of Zomia

A huge thank you to everyone who participated in the EU4 modathon Season 3! Wed highly encourage anyone remotely interested in modding to participate in one of these modathons at least once. Not only is making silly mods a lot of fun, its a great way to learn if you want to get into the modding sphere! The team environment ensures you never end up biting more off than you can chew and always have a helping hand to guide you.

You can find more information about the modathons over on their discord server at: https://discord.gg/GkE7xsCHET
And if you are looking for help with modding, youre always welcome at the EU4 Mod Coop: https://discord.gg/vmmPFndWVS

Till next time!