King of Kings
Last week we released patch 1.36.2, fixing several issues reported after 1.36 ‘Byzantium’ release. We’re so far quite happy with the stability and level of quality of this update, so we’ve decided this will be the last patch for it. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t issues that need to be fixed, or that there aren’t going to be any new ones that arise; but we will be tackling them in the 1.37 update, which is planned for the first half of 2024.
Apart from that, we’re quite happy with the reception of the King of Kings Immersion Pack. It has reshuffled new content to a region highly demanded by the community, and we think this is reflected across several aspects, from direct community feedback to the number of players, etc. We’re very thankful for that! And as there were demands for more Middle East-focused content, we'll definitely work on that in 2024.
Domination
We also released in April the other main Expansion of this year, EUIV: Domination. It was very different from other previous ones, as it was thematically focused on most of the Modern Age great powers at once, for which we created a great amount of content. It was released along with a quite ambitious update, 1.35 ‘Ottomans’, as touching so many different regions and aspects of the game at once made balancing one of the most challenging issues to tackle on it. As we were aware of this, we planned for a longer Post-Release Support, and we were able to release 3 hotfixes and 2 patches up until early July.
Nonetheless, Domination was a total blast for us, as it allowed us to work and update the content for the most important countries in the game, something very demanding, but rewarding as well. And, again, we need to thank the community for the reception of this DLC, as it was a great success!
Music Packs
This year we released two standalone Music Packs. The first was the free-to-download 10th Anniversary Community Music Pack, a remaster of 10 songs composed by Utopia and produced by George Hammond to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the game. The other is Utopia’s Holy Roman Empire Music Pack, which we release this Thursday, December 21st! Great music that comes from the EUIV community itself.
History Lessons
A new experimental type of DLC that we released in June was the History Lessons for China and Japan. Available in the game’s internal music player, we collaborated with two experienced podcasters, Laszlo Montgomery from ‘The China History Podcast’, and Isaac Meyer from ‘The History of Japan Podcast, to craft them, and approach a new immersive experience for the game - listening to a History podcast while you play it!
10th Anniversary
This year was marked by the great milestone of the 10th Anniversary of Europa Universalis IV. Johan, the game’s original and current Game Director, made a retrospective of its development back in August. I just want to add on top of that that it’s been a great pleasure and honor for the whole team of Paradox Tinto to have worked on it since the studio was founded, working closely with the other involved Paradox departments.
New Official Discord Server & Grandest LAN
Having the opportunity to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the game, our Community Team organized different activities during the month of August to get even closer to the community. The main one was the launch of a new official server on Discord, making for a new place to engage with other players and fans of the game, and with us, the developers, as well!
Other than that, the community could also celebrate its passion for the game in yet another edition of the Grandest LAN hosted at the magnificent Czocha Castle, in Poland. Our friends at Turbolarp prepared yet another great edition of the yearly EUIV event, and both the players in the castle but also those watching the streams at Twitch could experience another amazing and fun multiplayer experience.
That’s all for 2023, and for today! It’s been an exceptional year for Europa Universalis IV, and all the people working at Paradox Interactive and Paradox Tinto just wanted to thank you all, and wish you Happy Holidays! We’ll be back with new Dev Diaries around February, see you then!
