Welcome to Tinto Talks, the Happy Wednesdays, where we talk about what is happening with Europa Universalis V.

Here, your friendly Content Design Lead Pavía will be your host today, as today @Johan has been hijacked by the Swedes invited to the Swedish Game Awards (as Europa Universalis V has been nominated for 3 categories, Best Technology, Best Design, and Game of the Year; it can also be voted by the community as Player’s Game of the Year); while @SaintDaveUK is busy with a super secret project working on the game’s first DLC, Fate of the Phoenix.

Therefore, I will talk today about the current state of the Open Beta for 1.1 ‘Rossbach’, and some of our priorities and remaining work for it.

Yesterday, we released the 1.1.4 Update to the Open Beta. It addressed several issues that were commented by Johan on Saturday, on his ‘Happy Valentines Tinto Talks Extra’; these include a new rebalance of the Free Subjects vs Serfdom SV, explaining the reasons why; new performance improvements; fixes to the Transport Costs for Transport Ships; some more tweaks to the economy; some fixes to the Italian Wars; and other misc ones - you can check the full list on the changelog.

All of the change logs from 1.1 - 1.1.4, Plus additional missing patch notes are available on our Forum

These hundreds of notes, maybe close to a thousand, might look painful to check in all these separate threads; but don’t worry about that, because we have already planned to release them altogether in one big changelog when we release the full 1.1 ‘Rossbach’ patch, after we’re done with the Open Beta.

Speaking of that, let’s take a look at what we’re working on, and what are our remaining issues and priorities.

In first place, we have been taking a look at the issue of Coalitions not triggering Coalition Wars.

• We have prepared a fix for the next update of the Beta, in which AI will again use certain casus bellis like the Coalition CB.

Another issue that was pointed out was the HRE Laws being impossible to pass.

• We have adjusted the AI reasons to vote for proposed polices in the HRE. The HRE itself will no longer give a boost to vote, reduced the reasons to keep policies, increased the opinion factor from 25% to 50% of opinion, removed the -250 penalty to the great power check and have Diplomatic Reputation scale 3 times.

• We have also tweaked the tooltip for how an AI will vote for a policy in an IO, which will now consider the second best option for comparison instead whatever policy was proposed prior.

Speaking of the HRE, our internal Strike Team, composed by UX/UI Designers, Programmers, Content Designers, and QA Analysts, are on the works for further improvements and tweaks, specially on the graphical side, including a redesign of the HRE IO panel. We’ll also be fixing and polishing issues on all these fronts. As this is a big task, it’s going to take several weeks to complete and test it properly, so we’ve scoped it for the next big update, the 1.2 patch. However, if you think that there are any other urgent/critical issues regarding the HRE that deserve attention in 1.1, please let us know, so we can investigate them.

Early draft for a renewed HRE Treasury panel.​

Let me now talk a bit more in-depth into a more complex and troublesome issue: Rivers. As many of you know, in the 1.0 version of the game there was a not-very-good mapmode for rivers, that our UX/UI Team reworked for the 1.1 Update. Their work has been so good, that it has now surfaced several issues not only for the players, but also for the developers, that we were not able to tackle properly before - and that we can now prioritize and work on.

However, this work is very complex from the technical standpoint, as we have a mix of problems that may come either from the pixel maps we use for rivers and locations (which is a job for the Content Design team), or from some of the proximity connections/calculations (which is a job for the Programming team). Let me use a few examples:

Example of river that works more or less as expected, but has a few issues here and there: Why is there no connection between Harrow or Kingston? Or between Windsor and Woking?

Example of river that has major issues: There should be a connection between Ficarolo and Ferrara, but the river gets oddly interrupted mid-way.

Another example of an interrupted river: Why there is no connection between Treviglio and Lodi?​

The examples are many and diverse, so I won’t waste your time with more. The important thing for us now, and probably for you, is to talk about how and when are we going to fix them. As you might have noticed, this is a task that will require a lot of time, as we’ll have to manually check all river connections (I wish we could do it with a script, which is something we regularly do; but it is not possible in this case), report any tricky cases so the Programmers can investigate, etc.

Therefore, as it may take several man-weeks of work, we’ve decided to do it by chunks. We’ve already started by reviewing the European rivers, as we think these are the most critical for the game, due to the location density, and its intricacy. We think that it might be ready maybe for 1.1.5 or 1.1.6, depending on when we release these updates. From here, we’ll keep working on both ends, CD-work and Code-work; we’ll try to have as much solved as possible for 1.1, but we think that a realistic (and honest with you) scope is to try to have all issues solved for the 1.2 update.

Our pixel-based Rivers map, both the most nightmarish and chill work for any Content Designer in our team - I still have fond memories of drawing the Congo Basin a few years ago.​

Let’s now move into one of the new content additions of 1.1. ‘Rossbach’, the disaster ‘Turmoil in Brandenburg”. We’re on the work to flesh out a bit its panel, making it more user-friendly. We’ve also a couple more tweaks, as making the Cabinet Action for the Robber Barons available to run multiple times, instead of only one at the time. This will make it a bit easier to run through the Robber Baron Troubles, on the cost of using your cabinet slots.

Take all these screenshots as WIP, and not final.​

Also, speaking of Brandenburg, please let us know about your feedback and experience playing it in the Open Beta, and any issues you think it’s important for us to tackle regarding it!

Last, but not least, we’re also working towards making the economy at start a bit less harsh, since we now think that, with the latest tweaks, it’s in a good-enough position to address it.

And that’s all for today! We hope that all of you playing with any of the versions of the 1.1 Open Beta are enjoying it, and also thinking that we’re driving this big and important update for EU5 in the righ direction. We’re also going to be reading all your feedback regarding what you think it’s important for us to address before the full release of the patch, and any pain points you have! And speaking, of the full release of 1.1, we don’t have a exact date yet for it, as we want to make sure that we have a good-enough version for it; something we can only get thanks to your constructive feedback! Cheers!