Happy Wednesday, everyone. Ryagi here once again! And today we’re talking about a small but exciting feature making its return from past EU games: Decisions. We’ll give you an overview of what role we decisions in EU5 to play, and then dive into a quick round of examples. But before that, we have to talk about where they live in the gamegame...
As the tooltip suggests, this is where a country's unique content will live
The Content Tab will serve as a place to see “Ok, what makes my country unique”, which should help facilitate gameplay experiences whether you are trying to RP, Min-Max, or somewhere in between. We’ve moved some of the existing UI, such as the event viewer, to this area, and it will also serve as a place for future unique content! (Yes, speculate freely; we did say we’re aiming for a big content delivery system update next year ;D)
Unique advances can still also be found from within the advances tab, but this will be a nice one-stop shop for unique:
Reforms
Advances
Decisions
Policies & Laws
Subject types
Urban rights, Bureaucracy’s
Units
Anything else that makes a country unique!
Oops, it looks like I have to spoil some unique Across the Pillars content for the sake of showcasing the content tab…
Content here will be color coded and offer a good overview of what the content here actually is. Whether that be age icons for advances, or law icons to tell you where you can find your unique policy/law. So now that you’ve seen where they’re going to live… let’s talk about the decisions themselves!
Decisions are a feature many of you are already quite familiar with, and don’t worry, we're not reinventing the wheel. If you are familiar with their EU4 counterpart, you should feel pretty at home here. That being said, we do need to give Decisions enough time in the sun to see how they play out within the deeper framework of EU5 before we start utilizing them more extensively. So, consider the update 1.4 ‘Río Salado’ as the first iteration of them in EU5! And a base content delivery system we will build on in the future.
With all that being said, here is our vision for how EU5 decisions operate, and the design goals behind them. I’ll let our Content Design lead Pavia take it away!
@Pavía here, glad to come back to Tinto Talks! Something we’ve been working intensely on in the past few months has been the visualization of the existing content in the game. We listened to the community and clearly understood that it was frustrating for a lot of you to not know when a Dynamic Historical Event (DHE) with a meaningful Government Reform would trigger, or when that event chain that unlocks a new unique Law with some different Policies would pop up. And, to be honest, it was also frustrating for us, because we have put a lot of effort into making a lot of content for the game already for its release version, and it was not showing up.
We took a first step towards improving that via the Event Viewer that we released in the 1.2 ‘Echinades’ update. As DHEs are our most numerous content asset, with more than 4,000 currently in the game (over a total of more than 8,000, so around 50%), it helped a lot with overviewing all the content being unlocked by DHEs, and also the triggers needed to get it - which, as a side byproduct, is also allowing us to fix and tweak DHEs across the board, with the help of your reports, to make sure that you can play and experience it. That also surfaced another issue, which was some lack of player agency, as you also reported that sometimes, waiting for these DHEs to trigger was feeling a bit more like a waiting room than a playing experience.
This is the spot that the recovery of Decisions as a Content Delivery System ought to play. Structurally, they aren’t too dissimilar, as they have potentials, triggers, and effects. However, they make for a more active interaction with the game’s content, as the moment the triggers are fulfilled, they can be clicked and acted upon. Therefore, many of the current 1.4 decisions are not new content, but rather content that has been transformed from events that unlock other content (that rely on a bit of luck and can be a cumbersome goal to work towards). For example, think of unlocking the Kremlin building, which is no longer tied to an event with a chance that may simply take time to fire. Instead, it’s now a decision that you can actively choose to pursue:
We will keep adding new Generic and Unique Decisions over time, as this a new CDS we have available in the ‘menu of content creation’ - which also means that will be available to modders in the 1.4 ‘Río Salado’ update, of course. We will also be glad to receive your feedback on what are the Decisions, both generic and historical, that you want to play in the game, and we’ll do our best to take it into account. And now, I’ll pass back the word to Ryagi, to explain a bit more in detail how the EU5 Decisions work in practice, and show some examples.
Thanks Pavia! So as you might gather from many of these initial decisions being existing DHE’s in a “Click me” trenchcoat, many EU5 decisions also offer multiple options, rather than just a single path. In practice this means some decisions (such as merino wool) might be applicable for you to pursue for different reasons depending on your situation.
Decisions can be single-use, or repeatable. And while many decisions are country-specific, there are also quite a few generic ones that allow any country to pick them.
All shown including UI is work in progress. But as you can see, decisions will be both searchable and filterable.
Repeatable decisions are indicated as such.
Each decision has a “progress bar” to indicate at a glance how many of their requirements are met, and the ability to show/hide alerts (indicated by a little bell icon).
Some decisions are specific to certain ages, such as sponsoring cathedrals being limited to the Age of Renaissance, or Absolutism-related decisions being tied to… well as you might expect the Age of Absolutism. Our hope is having many decisions being tied to a certain ages to give players a sense of variety as the game progresses.
Let’s have a look at some examples from the game.
Sponsor a Cathedral/Great Madrasa
This is a generic Age of renaissance that functions similarly to the parliament issue but is triggered by you the player. A safe pick if you have a city in need of a Cathedral, and the gold to spend. There is also a Muslim Equivelent shown below, the Great Madrasa.
Comission a new Palace
A repeatable decision to build palace buildings. Palace’s increase both your cultural influence and tradition. A palace needs both the materials and the appropriat ranke and influence of course!
As a bonus you can keep the architect!
Establish a Thalassocracy
Let no one say you know nothing of ships. This is a decision that makes ship building easier, but gives you a 20 year timer to make improvements to your navy. In case your navy is up to shape after this time period, you will unlock the Thalassocracy Reform, which was previously available on its own, and gain the capability to construct an additional naval governor, on the cost of reducing your manpower capabilities.
The vast seas could become a vital part of our country and its economic expansion, if only we could adequately dominate the waters along our coast. Pouring significant resources into the expansion of our navy would allow us to align our infrastructure with this new focus on oversea ambitions.
Challenge the rights of Parliament
A decision for those who pursue the path of absolutism. You’re required to be at least slightly on the side of the absolutism societal value, and taking it allows you to remove urban parliament seats and gain a bit more absolutism.
Abolish Serfdom
This is a somewhat unique decision outcome in the sense that it doesn’t only impact free subject drift, but just flat sets the societal value to +20. Of course high stability costs should not be taken lightly, but this is an interesting option if you are looking to course correct late into the game. (Balance/numbers subject to change as with everything shown here)
Canal Construction
It would feel wrong to add back decisions without making sure our friends the canals are included. These are very high price projects, but they can offer great reward in the right circumstances. You can also build the Panama Canal!
The Privilegium Maius in Our Hands
This is an early game decision that can be taken by Austria, Tyrol, or Styria.
This Decision was previously part of the Event Chain about the Privilegium Maius, a pivotal moment of the Habsburg Dynasties standing within the Empire. We determined this specific event as too RNG heavy and too reliant on the timing of Austria's ascendancy as the Holy Roman Emperor. While the core of the event chain remains intact as events, this serves as a player driven end point, if the initial petition to the Emperor was only partially or not successful.
The Witchcraft Act
The Scottish Witchcraft Act of 1563 made both practicing witchcraft and the fact of consulting with witches capital offenses. James VI played a major part in it through his role in the North Berwick witch trials, which were the first major series of trials under the new act. The King published a defense of witch-hunting in the 'Daemonologie' in 1597 but later became increasingly skeptical and took steps to limit prosecutions. Scotland tried an estimated 6,000 people for witchcraft, where seventy-five percent of the accused were women, and over 1,500 people were executed.
you can defend the witchcraft act. The "Banned" policy makes estates happy but slightly nerfs your research speed.
Or ignore it, in which case the policy will do the inverse. Slightly increase your research, at the cost of unhappier estates (They really like burning witches).
Grand Pronouncements
This unique decision is available to non-Yuan Chinese unifiers from Age 2 onwards.
The Great Announcement used to be an event that could be triggered by a united China before 1390 (essentially the winner of the Red Turban Rebellion). This made it easily missable due to circumstances and also meant that it would not be available to any new Chinese dynasties that emerged after the Red Turban Rebellion. This decision ensures that the new Celestial Emperor always gains access to this content, regardless of when they unify China.
These are not all of the decisions of course, but we hope they can give you a good idea of what a typical decision looks like in EU5 when 1.4 comes knocking. Decisions pave the path for more unique and narrative content in the future made by us at Tinto, and was the case with EU4, decisions also open a lot of potential for creative modders as well.
That’s all for this week though, next time we’ll have our first look iinto a feature that has seen a good bit of speculation from within the community… expeditions!