Hello everyone, and be welcomed! In today’s DD we are going to take a look at different topics of the Origins Immersion Pack, and 1.32 patch: the new Judaism mechanics, more new mission trees all along Africa, and the setup changes we’ve done to the region. So, it will be content-heavy, then.
Let’s start with the new Judaism mechanics. It was one major religion lacking mechanics at this point of the game, so we thought that now it would be a good moment to handle it. Semien is the only country that can spawn with Judaism early game, while it can also be adopted by one of the most important countries in Origins, Ethiopia. And, on a side note, as it was VERY requested by you in the previous DD, and that reassured us on the ongoing work over it!
How we have designed it, Judaism works very similar to Protestantism, as it has 3 slots for Torah Aspects, each one costing 100 points of Faith Power. Those points are gained at a rate of 10% of your monarch points per month, minus a modifier depending on your religious unity.
Torah Aspects are split into three categories (Administrative, Diplomatic, and Military), and each category have 3 slots to chose upon, giving your country some benefits and modifiers, that are fully shown in a tooltip if you hover the click button over it:
ADM Aspects unlock the use of the ‘Celebrate Festival’ button, which has different effects depending on the ADM Aspect you have chosen. The ‘Celebrate Festival’ action costs 200 Faith Power. The three aspects give you following modifiers:
-2 National Unrest modifier, and using ‘Celebrate Festival’ gives +1 Stability.
-5% Technology Cost modifier, and using ‘Celebrate Festival’ gives +20 Reform Progress, +5 Legitimacy (or equivalent), and +5 Claim Strength of Heir.
-0.5 Interest Per Annum modifier, and using ‘Celebrate Festival’ gives 0.3 Years of Income, and reduces Inflation by 1.
DIP Aspects manipulate the relations your people have with the Abrahamic religions and vice versa. Each aspect gives a passive bonus additionally to their modifiers:
+2 Tolerance of the True Faith, all Jewish Provinces have no culture penalties.
+2 Tolerance of Heathens, all Christian and Muslim provinces have no effect on the Religious Unity of your country.
-10% Development Cost, all Non-Theocratic Christian and Muslim countries gain +35 Opinion of you.
MIL Aspects modify the military strength of the country and affect the generation of Faith Power. The modifiers are the following:
-15% Land Attrition, during war you get +10% (20% in defensive wars) Manpower Recovery Speed and +5% (10% in defensive wars) Faith Power
+25% Fort Defense, gain +2 Siege Progress if you siege your own fallen forts, gain +15 Faith Power for every occupied enemy fort
+5% Land and Navy Morale, winning battles decreases War Exhaustion by 0.05, winning wars gives +50 Faith Power
On top of that, we have created a set of new flavor events for Jewish countries. Some of their topics are the reconstruction of the Third Temple, making the ruler choose some things during Sabbath, Abrahamic religions converting to Judaism, and about the figure of the Messiah as their topics. Others are centered around the celebrations, so you can have a proper Bar Mitzvah for your heir, and 3 celebrations around the year: Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot.
Now let’s take a look at the setup changes we’ve done for 1.32, along with some more new mission trees. Here we’ve got 4 new regional mission trees (West Africa, Central Africa, Horn of Africa, and East Africa), so every country in Sub-Saharan Africa will have at least one specific or one of those, and we’ve also added 5 more ‘minor’ mission trees (Jolof, Mossi, Hausa, Oyo and Adal), as we had some extra development time, and we decided that more content would be best. So, let’s go region by region, then.
In West Africa we’ve made a few changes. From west to east, Macina is no longer a starting country. However, it can spawn as a revolter after Fulani culture expands to the provinces of Termes, Wagadu and Baghena (at game start, in northern Mali and SW Timbuktu), and it can be also formed by a country with Fulani culture (Great Fulo, for instance). Then we have divided the former Mossi tag into three new ones: Yatenga, Wagadugu and Fada N’Gourma. We could have created more, but we decided to use the same criteria as for Hausan countries, to not have too many OPM’s in the region. Finally, we have created the Wadai Emirate at the east of Lake Chad and Yao. Our intention here is to have a continuum of inhabited provinces from the Atlantic to the Indic Oceans, after both Great Fulo and Funj spawns by event, portraying the traditional trade route of Darfur corridor.
All countries in this region without a specific mission tree will have a new, generic one. It has 3 different paths, a military one, other economic, and the third one religious. The first two interact among themselves, and have as their main objective to assert your country as the powerhouse in West Africa. Meanwhile, the third mission set is in reality two, as Islamic and Fetishist countries will have different paths; Muslims will aim to impose their faith as the only one in the region, while Fetishists will aim to establish a syncretic traditional religion in their country.
Now let’s take a look at the minor mission trees we added in this region. The first one is for Jolof. The first two columns are about pushing Mali out of West Africa, replacing them and establishing an empire in West Africa. Additionally, you also aim to contact the Europeans and make a deal with them. Apart from that, we wanted to portray their specific government form, with Jolof being ‘primus inter pares’ of some smaller kingdoms. Because of that, they now have a unique government reform to represent the kingdom confederacy Jolof used to be, so now these ‘petty kingdoms’ are three ‘estate privileges', which represent the decentralization of Jolof. The thirds column in the mission tree requests you to centralize by taking certain privileges. Centralizing the state requires you to have at least 2 stability and a lot of estate loyalty with the chieftains. If you centralize you will automatically lose one stab and a good chunk of estates loyalty.
For the Mossi, we have a common mission tree for the three countries, but also for that tag if each of those are able to form it by decision. Their mission focus is pretty straight forward: Conquer West Africa! The "Invade" missions will immediately loot important cities and give you all of its gold.
Forming Mossi will trigger one event later on and add two missions to your tree about their government form. Unlike Jolof's Confederacy, the Mossi Confederal Kingdom is more beneficial. It gives you access to the Tribal Federation mechanic if you have Cradle of Civilization and unlocks a bunch of new decisions for you too. The effects of the decisions are not instant however, as they will always take about 6 months before being in effect. In addition, you have to ‘pay’ in legitimacy and local autonomy. Finally, completing the ‘Centralize the Confederacy’ mission allows you to break out of this government reform or reinforce it even more through an event choice.
Hausan missions also have the same scope as the Mossi ones, so you can have them as one of their starting countries, or if you form the Hausa tag. They are about the conquest of the other Hausa states. Then, ‘Unite the Cities’ requires you to be either Hausa or Sokoto. To help the early phase out you can request militaristic aid from allies through the mission ‘Form Alliances"’. Hausa's mission ‘Develop the Cities’ revolves around the 7 cities which were founded by the 7 different Hausa rulers. Completing this mission will give every one of these 7 cities a unique province modifier for 10 years, reflecting the history and role of these cities. ‘Resolve Internal Issues’ will enable a decision for you, which allows you to get these bonuses for these 7 cities every 20 years again. ‘Contact with the Fulani’ triggers an event for you, which makes Fulani into an accepted culture for you. Through this you are allowed to form Sokoto, and then it will replace the fourth column with three missions, which are about the Jihad in West Africa. The last reward for converting all the provinces to Islam is a permanent +2 Tolerance of True Faith and -0.5% Prestige Decay.
Finally we have the Oyo mission tree. First column is about their historical usage of cavalry. As such you are emphasized to trade with the Muslims. After that you unlock a special mercenary company for them. The mission ‘Chaaaarge!!’ will disable the Army Professionalism cost from this cavalry merc company. The remaining columns are about pushing the Muslims out of West Africa and becoming the dominant power of West Africa. Oyo is also the defender of the Fetishistic faith (though not really a defender, but you get the idea). As such, the province Ife has gained a specific bonus. Oyo's missions are also special in their requirements, as they allow progress through tributaries too! It’s done through a special government reform, which allows you to do that. Then, the mission ‘Reform the Government’ will unlock an estate privilege which allows tributaries even if they are no longer a tribal country. It should be noted that if you revoke the privilege at any time your tributaries will break free, so use this one with caution.
Now let’s move to Congo and Central Africa. Here we felt comfortable with the setup, as it allows a diverse gameplay with different countries, with Kongo as the main powerhouse, as you already know. What we’ve done is adding a new mission tree for the other countries in both regions. They are mainly in three branches. In the war/economic branch, you start preparing for war, and the idea is that at first it’s used to boost your economy, through raiding. This is represented with a mission requiring you to have multiple war reparations. Once you are able to maintain and train a proper army you start expanding to the point of becoming the military power of the region (with a mission requiring you to have the biggest army around), and then you can go up to become an empire. The second branch is the diplomatic, that starts by getting strong allies to secure your position (the mission actually requires for them to be strong, or being either Kongo, Kilwa or Mutapa), then gaining the trust of the allies, then once your position is secure you turn to aggressive diplomacy with the missions requiring you to have vassals and then (tied to the war path too) going to a point of inflicting a crushing blow to a rival to humiliate them (which is in itself a requirement for becoming an empire). The third branch is the religious one, with you first starting as a fetishist gathering pokem... I mean, cults, and then the idea is that you get in contact with the Muslim countries (tied to the alliances missions of the diplomacy branch), from whom you can get valuable info, and then it's just expanding your religion, first by waring against any country that borders you but is not your religion, and then by having to convert province.
Then we have the Horn of Africa. Here we have added another new tag, Ogadeen, portraying the Somali clans that inhabit that space. This regional mission tree revolves around religious clashes. Your aim is to conquer and convert the heathens, uniting the tags of your faith, and become the main power of the region. After completing the final mission of those branches, ‘Save the Horn’, you will get the permanent modifier ‘The Holy Horn’, giving you +50% Religious Unity in reward for your efforts. In parallel to that, you’ve got some missions with an economic scope, that aims at your country being the main trade power in the Indian Ocean.
In the same region we have the last ‘minor’ mission tree, that of Adal. Their missions are mostly focused on giving Ethiopia a real fight to deal with. This is especially emphasized by a mission reward early on, ‘Restore the Old Mosque’, that is about the mosque Masjid al-Qiblatayn in Zeila, one of the oldest mosques in Africa; so, developing Zeila will give you a great Mosque there. ‘Reach the Turks’ is about establishing relations with the Ottomans. This mission can be completed by having any kind of regiment at the coast of the Mediterranean or in a province held by a Turkish country. It will trigger an event chain, not limited to the Ottomans, as it will seek out for the strongest Turkish power in Anatolia, that will eventually give some Janissary mercenaries; should there be no Turkish power at all in Anatolia in the rare occasion that the wet dream of a Byzantophile comes true, then Adal will ask Mamluks for help instead, unlocking the Mamluks mercs instead of the Janissaries. The rest of the mission tree is pretty straight-forward: unite the Somali clans, eliminate Ethiopia, convert the Horn of Africa, and get a connection to West Africa.
Let’s finish with the East Africa mission tree. Here we have focused on trade, regional expansion and strategic one in trade ports as main focuses. The objective is, obviously, becoming a great power (who would have noticed that regarding EU4!). However, one of the last missions of the tree is a funny one, as you’ll be aiming at reversing the trade visit that Zheng He made to the region a few decades ago, establishing a strong trade presence in the Chinese region trade ports.
So that’s all for today, which I think is a lot, as we covered a bunch of very different content all across the continent. Actually, this is the last DD delivered from CD Team, as the next DD’s before release will be focusing on the new Art in Origins Immersion Pack, the new Achievements we’ve created, and the changelog (be prepared for it, as it will have hundreds of fixes that will go live with 1.32 patch, literally!). As always, your feedback will be appreciated; just be civil, and take into account that some numbers may be tweaked before release. See you!