Hello everyone, and welcome to this Friday's special edition of Tinto Talks. Last Wednesday, Johan presented the first part of the Politics and Diplomacy update for version 1.2. Since it had reached a considerable size, he entrusted me with the second part today.
Therefore, we have another Happy Friday special, in which we will talk in depth about the Holy Roman Empire, which underwent a profound transformation, and all the other important changes in International Organizations and EU5 Situations.
I want to start by noting that we consider both the International Organizations and the Situations the most important Content Delivery Systems (CDS) currently in EU5. This means that since the release of the game, we’ve made an effort throughout the 1.0.X, 1.1, and 1.2 patches and updates to keep a constant maintenance of them, rotating among our 3 internal teams: Custodian Hot-Fixing (Live Services patching), Custodian Cold-Fixing (Future Update improvements and overhauls), and Content Creation (DLC New Features). For instance, at some point, we had a sub-team working on bug fixes for 1.1; another one working on additional fixes, tweaks, and improvements for the 1.2 Update; and a third sub-team working on the new content for Fate of the Phoenix. This way, we want to ensure the short, mid, and long-term upkeep of the CDS present in the game, cohesively, and we will keep working this way in the near future.
So let me now show you what the results of this effort are for the upcoming 1.2 ‘Echinades’ update.
Holy Roman Empire
The HRE has received the largest volume of changes of any system in this update, touching the UI, election logic, diplomacy, events, buildings, and the underlying modifier architecture. We'll go section by section.
Imperial Diet - UI Overhaul
The Imperial Diet panel has been rebuilt from the ground up. The previous implementation presented all information in a flat layout that made it difficult to distinguish members, policies, and finances at a glance. The reworked panel introduces a proper tabbed structure, an overview tab, a members tab, and a treasury subtab, so that each dimension of Diet management has a dedicated space. The Imperial Diet also has a new parliament icon, and the HRE header now exposes the active modifier stack directly, letting players see exactly what buffs and penalties the Empire is carrying without having to dig through tooltips.
Portrait placement and voter ordering have both been corrected. Electors are now sorted by vote strength in the Diet display, so the most influential voters appear first. Previously, ordering was arbitrary and gave no signal about which electors actually mattered in any given vote.
Several tooltip gaps have been addressed. When you call a parliament, the tooltip on the call button now shows the projected voting outcome before you commit, you can see whether a proposal is likely to pass or fail without having to trigger the vote. The tooltip for electing an Emperor now lists every factor contributing to each candidate's score. Policy tooltips now surface negative vote reasons alongside positive ones; previously, only supporters were shown, making it hard to understand why a proposal was failing. A longstanding display bug where the vote UI showed "NAME is not available" instead of the player country's name has been fixed.
Voting for the Golden Bull, in 3 steps!
Two alert improvements round out the UI pass. A new alert fires when Emperor actions become available, and the alert now lists the specific target countries eligible for those actions. Previously, you had to open the Diet manually to discover who could be acted upon. The Invite to IO button has also been corrected to target the right set of countries; it was previously pulling from an incorrect candidate pool.
Finally, the HRE status backing, the visual display of Imperial Authority, no longer resets to 0% when the Emperor changes hands. This was a pure display bug; the underlying value was correct, but the UI failed to re-read it after succession.
Imperial Armory
The Imperial Armory is a new building that the Emperor can construct in any HRE member's territory, not just their own, when the Military Contribution Law is voted and approved. Mechanically, it has two forms. The foreign variant (built in another member's location) employs soldiers who funnel manpower back to the Emperor at a rate of 0.5% of the location's capacity. The own variant (built in the Emperor's own territory) instead provides a local manpower pool and grants the Emperor the ability to recruit units directly at that location.
When a location changes hands, the building automatically converts between these two forms: if the Emperor acquires the location, the foreign armory becomes an owned armory; if a member acquires a location the Emperor built in, the owned armory converts to the foreign type. If the location leaves HRE ownership entirely, the building converts to an ordinary local building. When the Emperor title passes, all foreign armories transfer to the new Emperor automatically. The building scales with military contribution policy level, and higher-tier military laws unlock higher armory levels, which increase manpower yields.
This creates a concrete mechanical reason for the Emperor to invest in member territories, and gives military policies a spatial dimension: your armory network is now a strategic asset tied to which locations you have access to.
Special Statuses and Opinion
Granting, requesting, or rescinding a Special Status, Electorate, Free City, Legatus Natus, Primas Germaniae, now produces an opinion bonus or malus between the Emperor and the recipient. This was previously a costless interaction with no relational consequence. The Legatus Natus and Primas Germaniae bestowals specifically now generate positive opinion toward the Emperor, matching the behaviour of the Bestow Electorate diplomatic action. Historical elector events for Bavaria, Palatinate, and Meissen have been updated to grant the same opinion bonus as that action, so the result is consistent whether the electorate is granted via event or player choice.
This is the new default Members tab, with filters applying to all Special Statuses, and a country list that works better with the Search filters. However, if you click on the ‘Flags Display’ button to the left of the Search bar, the old disposition with all the country flags will be set - it’s completely up to you to decide which one you prefer!:
Elections
The election system has been significantly reworked for both correctness and performance. The candidate evaluation loop now only fully scores the top 25 candidates by Great Power Score; weaker powers are filtered out before the AI runs its full decision model. This is meaningful because large late-game HREs can accumulate many dozens of members, and previously, every member was evaluated in full every time an election fired.
The vote weight model has been rebalanced. Opinion now contributes 50% of the AI's motivation (up from 25%), the blanket −250 GPS penalty has been removed, Diplomatic Reputation now scales at 3× its previous rate, and the incentive to retain existing policies has been reduced. The intent is that electors should vote based on who they like and who they trust diplomatically, rather than defaulting to the incumbent out of inertia.
Three bugs in the election itself have been fixed: the candidate list is now properly cached between ticks; the election could previously assign a fiefdom's ruler rather than the fiefdom's owner as Emperor; and a separate logical oversight in the election evaluation has been corrected (details elided to avoid spoilers for emergent play).
Elector management is now automated. The HRE runs a monthly check that removes superfluous electors when the cap is exceeded, pruning the lowest GPS electors first. This prevents the accumulation of powerless electors after repeated events or player actions. A new Game Rule has also been added to control which rank of country can become a Kingdom within the Empire, giving server hosts and solo players more control over the Empire's internal composition.
A much clearer disposition for the Electoral race!
Diplomacy and AI
The Imperial Ban CB now allows a separate peace, and it can target locations in provinces that only partially overlap with the HRE, a geography edge case that previously made the CB unavailable in situations where it should have applied.
Demand Unlawful Territory. Several exploits have been closed. The action can no longer be used against countries currently at war. A cooldown bug allowed it to be used more frequently than intended; this has been fixed. A self-targeting edge case has been corrected. The modifier it applies could be renewed repeatedly; this is no longer possible. A scope bug (root was used where scope:actor was required in the country_has_special_status trigger) caused it to incorrectly validate targets; fixed. It can no longer be used against non-HRE countries for non-HRE beneficiaries.
AI Spam Prevention. Rejectable Emperor actions, Bestow Free City, Enforce Religious Unity, Demand Unlawful Territory, and Bolster Imperial Army, now carry a two-year AI cooldown. Previously, the AI could fire these repeatedly in quick succession, producing an overwhelming stream of diplomatic demands that felt more like a bug than a feature.
Free Cities. The Emperor now only defends independent Free Cities through the HRE's defensive obligation. Subject Free Cities are treated like ordinary members, with no special protection clause. This resolves an edge case where the Emperor was being pulled into wars on behalf of Free City subjects of other members.
Call to Arms. When the Emperor accepts a CTA through the HRE mechanism, the Emperor's own allies are now automatically called in alongside the HRE. Previously, the Emperor's bilateral alliances were silent during HRE-triggered wars. A related fix ensures that the Emperor's allies properly join the war when the player holds the Emperor title.
Subjugation and Coalition Wars. Subjugating the HRE Emperor no longer triggers erroneous coalition wars. The logic that determined coalition formation was reading the wrong scope when the Emperor was the target.
Interregnum. Imperial Authority now correctly drains during an interregnum. The monthly IA loss during a period without an Emperor is −1 per month, compounding further for extended interregna. Previously, the interregnum was mechanically toothless; leaving the Empire leaderless had no IA cost.
Unintegrated Territory. The AI will no longer add unintegrated locations to the HRE. This was producing HRE expansion that didn't reflect actual Imperial control.
Conquered Status and IO Restrictions. You can no longer add locations with "conquered" status to any international organization. This closes a vector where subjects could add freshly conquered land to the HRE, which would immediately qualify as Unlawful Territory and create destabilising claims.
Theocracy AI. HRE theocracies now have a standing diplomatic objective to improve relations with the Papal States, running annually until they reach the 150 opinion threshold required for Legatus Natus and Primas Germaniae eligibility. This makes the pursuit of those statuses feel organic rather than dependent on the player or AI stumbling into the right opinion value.
Peace Deals. The AI now uses a more accurate antagonism calculation when evaluating HRE peace deals, incorporating HRE-specific modifiers it was previously ignoring.
Manpower Policies. Military contribution policies now grant scaling maximum manpower rather than monthly manpower income, a change that makes the yield more predictable and avoids compounding interactions with income multipliers. Military policies now create dissatisfaction among all HRE members, not just free cities and electors.
Events
Several HRE events have been corrected or extended:
Wayward Sheep Returns no longer fires after Religious Peace has been signed.
A Prince Released now always awards at least 0.1 Imperial Authority, preventing zero-IA grants from rounding errors.
A Prince Undone now correctly fires when an HRE member is annexed by a non-member (a trigger condition was malformed).
A Heretic Prince now has unique titles for Lutheran, Calvinist, Hussite, and Catholic-heretic rulers rather than a single generic title.
Privileges Revoked no longer incorrectly mentions that members will become direct vassals.
Succession.100 no longer fires when the ruler character is the HRE Emperor, this was producing duplicate succession logic.
Milan's A United Realm event now only offers the HRE unification path when Milan is an HRE member and the current Emperor is not Milan.
A new fire event notifies the Emperor when a member is subjugated by a non-Christian power.
State Bank vassals now transfer to the Emperor on unification; Free Banks are not annexed.
The HRE Kingdom of Lotharingia geography now includes Holland.
A full hint panel has been added explaining Special Statuses, the voting process, and Emperor diplomatic actions for new players.
Imperial Justice in action!
Autocephalous Patriarchates
The Autocephalous Patriarchates system, which models the self-governing Christian churches of Orthodoxy, Miaphysitism, and related traditions, has received a significant rework touching its laws, characters, events, modifiers, and UI.
UI Rework
The patriarchate panel has been reworked for coherence, as you could see. Tenets are now surfaced in the overview alongside the member list rather than requiring a separate navigation path. The panel decorations switch between the ordinary patriarchate visual set and the Ecumenical visual set depending on seat type, making the distinction immediately legible without tooltips.
The religious icon in the panel header is now dynamic; it reads from the IO's actual religion rather than a static asset, so Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian, Coptic, and other variants each display their own distinct icon. Generic action icons have been added throughout. A change icon has been added to clarify which laws can be switched and which are locked.
An issue where countries could not correctly be invited to join the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been fixed, along with a bug that caused script errors when evaluating chained properties on an invalid `scope:recipient`, a crash-adjacent issue that could silently corrupt patriarchate-related event logic.
Patriarch Characters
Patriarch characters are now properly instantiated for patriarchates, including historically appropriate figures for patriarchates that exist at game start. When a patriarchate is created or its patriarch dies, the system scans the owning country for existing male adult clergy whose religion matches the IO. If a suitable candidate is found, they are elevated to patriarch; if none exists, a new character is generated at an appropriate age. Pentarchy patriarchates, those seated at Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, or Alexandria, additionally track whether a patriarch already holds that seat, preventing duplicate pentarchs from appearing at the same location.
Laws and Tenets
Two new tenet laws have been added to the patriarchate law system, both covering Christological doctrine, the theological definitions that historically divided the Eastern churches.
The first is the Nature Tenet, which defines a patriarchate's position on Christ's nature: *single* (as in Coptic and Ethiopian Miaphysitism), *composite*, *dual* (the Orthodox position), or *separate* (Nestorianism). The second is Christology, which governs the relationship between Christ's divine and human aspects: *high Christology* grants tolerance toward one's own religion and benefits the leader especially, while *low Christology* improves clergy satisfaction. Both tenets are definitional; they reflect foundational doctrinal identity, and so they are now a locked law. Players cannot freely reassign them; they belong to the class of laws that define what a patriarchate is, not what policy it currently pursues.
More broadly, the laws have been reorganised so that definitional laws (those representing core doctrine) are clearly separated from deliberative ones. When a new patriarchate is created, it now copies all policies from the previous patriarchate if one exists, so that a relocated or reconstituted church starts from a meaningful baseline rather than factory defaults.
The prestige requirement to found a patriarchate has been reduced from 80 to 60, making the early formation of new patriarchates more accessible without removing the requirement entirely.
Seat Relocation and the Ecumenical Title
A patriarchate's seat is the holy site location that anchors its identity. You can now only relocate the seats of patriarchates that you own, a restriction that prevents foreign powers from redirecting another country's church against their will.
When a seat is successfully relocated to an episcopal see, the rare, historically significant holy sites associated with the ancient patriarchal cities, a special event fires acknowledging the move's significance, granting prestige and clergy satisfaction. The episcopal see designation is what separates an ordinary patriarchate seat from an Ecumenical one: only seats placed at one of the five pentarchy locations (Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria) that carry the episcopal see type qualify. The game now enforces this correctly; a patriarchate is only named Ecumenical if its seat is at one of those locations.
A mismatch between the religion shown in the IO panel and the actual religion of the Ecumenical Patriarchate has been fixed. The panel now reads the religion from the leader country directly, ensuring the correct faith is always displayed.
Seat-Capture Events
When a patriarchate seat is captured in war, the game fires one of two different events depending on whether the captor shares the patriarchate's religion.
If a co-religionist captures the seat, the previous leader faces a choice: dissolve the patriarchate (with an opinion penalty toward former members), maintain it under the new owner, or, if the captor is already a member or the patriarchate has no leader, assume leadership directly and receive a prestige reward. This models a schism or a straightforward transfer of custodianship within the same faith.
If a heretic or heathen captures the seat, the tone shifts. The previous leader can choose to dissolve it, receiving a temporary tolerance penalty as the faithful mourn the loss, or maintain the patriarchate under foreign control, which saddles the IO with an ongoing religious influence drain and the country with a tolerance modifier reflecting the compromise. Both effects are doubled if the captured seat was an Ecumenical Patriarchate.
Patriarchate Seat Falls Modifiers, Fixed Exclusivity and Decay
When a seat falls to hostile hands, the game previously applied both the "maintain" and "destroy" modifiers simultaneously in some cases, producing contradictory effects at once, a country could receive both the tolerance bonus for maintaining the patriarchate *and* the tolerance penalty for abandoning it. These modifiers are now mutually exclusive by construction: only the path actually chosen is applied.
The decay flag was also missing from the modifiers, meaning that once applied, they would persist indefinitely rather than fading over time. All five modifiers, destroying under heretic, destroying under heathen, maintaining under heretic, maintaining under heathen, and the IO-level religious influence drain, now correctly decay.
Coalition Expulsion
Previously, a member joining a coalition against the patriarchate's leader would cause automatic expulsion from the IO. This created an awkward situation where members engaged in ordinary great-power politics, joining a coalition for strategic reasons unrelated to religion, would find themselves cut off from their patriarchate. Members who join coalitions against fellow members are no longer expelled. The expulsion rule now only triggers when a member directly targets the patriarchate's leader.
Protector of the Patriarchate
The *Protector of the Patriarchate* estate privilege, available to Catholic powers that hold Constantinople as a holy site, had broken the unlock conditions that prevented it from becoming available correctly. The unlock path has been fixed. The privilege's bonus suite has also been revised: it now grants clergy satisfaction, religious influence, curia action cost reduction, tolerance of one's own faith, and a diplomatic reputation bonus, reflecting the prestige and ecclesiastical leverage that comes with custodianship over one of Christendom's most historically significant sees.
Swiss Confederation
The Swiss Confederation IO has received a focused round of changes this period, most of them aimed at tightening the membership and governance logic to better reflect what the confederation actually was historically, a compact of smaller Alpine polities, not a catch-all alliance for any neighbouring power that wandered in.
The most impactful membership change is that Duchy rank and above are now significantly less likely to join. The Swiss Confederation's historical character was defined by its cantons having relatively modest powers, punching above their weight through collective solidarity, and having major ducal or royal powers absorb themselves into the confederation was distorting that identity considerably.
We've also added a hard cap: any country owning more than eighty locations is forced to leave. This closes off the scenario where a confederation member snowballs into a regional hegemon and remains inside the confederation, effectively turning a compact of peers into a vehicle for a single dominant power. The confederation should be a coalition of roughly comparable parties, and this threshold enforces that.
Geography now also matters for joining. Only countries that border the Swiss Confederation's locations can become members, which was a surprisingly absent requirement given how physically defined the historical confederation was. The previous behaviour allowed distant powers to join with no territorial connection whatsoever, which produced some deeply ahistorical and immersion-breaking membership compositions.
On the governance side, the voting rules have been tightened so that only members can vote for the ruler, a change that sounds obvious but was previously unguarded. Finally, we fixed a serious bug where the Direct Vote mechanism was triggering a permanent Power Struggle state, which was locking the confederation into an endless internal conflict with no resolution path. That's now corrected, and the confederation's internal politics should cycle through their intended states cleanly.
Jurchen Confederations
The Jurchen Confederations IO has undergone some of its most significant structural rework to date, centred on overhauling how policies and laws interact with each other and with the player's resources.
The headline change is that policies and laws now share a unified cooldown system with an integrated price modifier. Previously, these two systems ran on separate tracks, which created awkward situations where a player could spam one while being locked out of the other, and made it difficult to reason about the true cost of confederation management. Bringing them under a single framework gives the system much better coherence.
Closely related, the requirement that the leader have more than 10 Tribal Cohesion before enacting policies has been removed; that cost has been folded into the policy price itself instead. This is a cleaner design: gating actions behind a stat threshold and charging a separate resource cost punished players twice for the same decision, and the threshold requirement added friction without adding meaningful strategic depth.
All policy modifiers have been refactored and revamped alongside a broader rebalancing pass, so the policies should now feel more distinct from each other and more meaningfully tied to Jurchen confederation identity. Jurchen barracks maintenance has also been rebalanced to be more affordable; the previous costs were steep enough to make military upkeep a persistent drain that crowded out other confederation decisions, rather than being a manageable ongoing expense.
On the content side, the "Resistance to New Ways" event now grants more Tribal Cohesion and Stability, giving it the weight it deserves as a cultural moment of pushback against outside influence. Finally, we fixed an inverted logic bug that was causing Jianzhou reforms to be lost on Sinicization rather than preserved, a particularly frustrating issue given that Sinicization is one of the most consequential long-term paths in the confederation, and silently stripping reforms from players who pursued it was a serious progression problem.
Yet another bug was fixed while writing this TT, and now the Jurchen Confederations have the proper background illustration shown in their panels!
High Kingship
The High Kingship of Ireland has seen a combination of design work & bug fixes, with a strong throughline around keeping the Irish political landscape appropriately fractured and contested.
The most deliberate design changes are to the two core CBs. The Overthrow CB now carries a custom wargoal that makes conquest harder, wresting the High Kingship from a rival should be a political act of dominance, not a straightforward land grab, and the previous war goal was making it too easy to convert military victory directly into territorial consolidation. The Subjugation CB similarly now makes conquest more expensive, with the explicit goal of keeping Irish minors fractured. The historical tension of the High Kingship was precisely that no king ever managed to fully subordinate the other lords, and mechanics that make swift unification too cheap work against the situation's entire premise.
On the stability side, we fixed an election bug that allowed a High King to be elected within the first year of the situation, a window that was too short for the political landscape to have settled into anything meaningful, and which produced elections that felt arbitrary rather than earned. We also fixed the IO failing to disband when only a single member remained, which was leaving a one-member "confederation" limping along indefinitely in a state that should have triggered a clean conclusion.
Finally, we fixed a bug preventing a sole remaining High Kingship member from forming Éire, an outcome that should be the natural endpoint of successfully outlasting all your rivals within the situation, and which was being incorrectly blocked.
Ilkhanate
The Ilkhanate IO received two important lifecycle fixes this period. The situation now properly disbands when no possible claimants remain; previously, it could persist indefinitely as a hollow shell with no legitimate successors to contest, which robbed it of any remaining political meaning and left the gamestate in an awkward limbo. The Ilkhanate's historical story is one of fragmentation and eventual dissolution, and the situation should reach a clean end when the succession question is fully exhausted.
We also fixed a bug where the IO leader could still attempt to claim leadership after the situation should have concluded, which was allowing an illegitimate continuation of Ilkhanate authority well past its natural endpoint. It's worth noting that the removal of the ability to create new Ilkhanates entirely is work sitting on other branches and will arrive separately, so that's a change to watch for in a future update rather than this one.
Middle Kingdom
The Middle Kingdom saw two targeted fixes. The Celestial Governors count display was showing incorrect values, which was a persistent UI issue that made it genuinely difficult to track one of the situation's core metrics at a glance, that's now rendering correctly. The "Serving the Middle Kingdom" event has also been restricted to only fire for countries that are actual subjects of the Middle Kingdom leader, closing off a loophole where outside powers could engage with an event that was meant to represent a specifically tributary relationship.
Tatar Yoke
The Tatar Yoke received a balance adjustment and two quality-of-life improvements. War Enthusiasm has been increased for the attacker side on Tatar Yoke CBs, reflecting the historical urgency and fervour behind efforts to throw off Mongol overlordship, campaigns to break the Yoke were not cautious defensive affairs, and the mechanics should carry that energy.
We fixed a bug where spending effects were persisting after the Yoke was broken, which was silently penalising players who had successfully achieved the situation's central goal. Breaking free of the Yoke should be an unambiguous relief, not a transition into a new set of invisible debuffs. Finally, the pop-up that fires when breaking free now includes proper reason text explaining what has happened and why, a small change but one that makes a dramatically significant moment feel appropriately weighty and legible to the player.
Now it's time for an update on Situations!
Red Turban Rebellions
The Red Turban Rebellions situation represents one of the most dramatic political collapses in Chinese history, and we've put a lot of work into version 1.2 to make sure the experience lives up to that legacy. For players jumping into the situation for the first time, whether as the embattled Yuan court in Beijing or as one of the emerging warlords, we've added first-day guidance events that explain the core mechanics and give you an immediate decision to ground you in the situation. The Yuan player event, A Storm Approaches, walks you through managing allegiance and celestial authority, while warlord players now receive a meaningful opening choice that can seed their nascent state with talented characters and a boost to popular support.
One of the roughest edges we smoothed out is the Rein in Area action. Previously, it had a flat cost regardless of how much territory you were absorbing, which made it trivially cheap to consolidate the densely populated Chinese heartland. The cost now scales with the combined population of the locations being integrated, so swallowing a major core province like Dadu's hinterlands will set you back accordingly. We also fixed a bug where using this action would briefly downgrade core locations to integrated status for a single month before correcting itself, a subtle but noticeable flicker that could confuse players.
On the peace treaty side, Demand Occupied Territories was shipping with a warscore cost of -80, effectively giving you warscore when you claimed territory you'd fought hard to take. That is now correctly a +80 cost, meaning demanding your conquests is a meaningful spend rather than a free meal. For players who want a more decisive conclusion to a successful rebellion, we've added a brand-new peace option, Demand All Chinese Territories, which lets a victorious rebel leader claim the entire Yuan territorial inheritance in one sweeping demand, reflecting the historical ambition of figures like Zhu Yuanzhang.
The Demand Annexation diplomatic action received two fixes in 1.2. The underlying math for how acceptance was calculated contained a logic error that could produce wildly incorrect results, and that has been corrected. More visibly, the action now explains exactly why a target warlord is inclined to accept or refuse your annexation offer, so you can see which factors are driving their decision rather than guessing.
We also resolved a frustrating scope issue where the special Red Turban actions were accessible to countries that existed purely through title or dynastic claims rather than having an actual location-based foothold. Those actions are now correctly restricted to location-based countries only. Similarly, Declare War for Regional Supremacy could previously only be used against Red Turban rebels whose capital happened to fall within a narrow geographic check, this is now available against all qualifying Red Turban rebels regardless of where their capital sits, which opens up more aggressive inter-warlord warfare that the situation is designed to encourage.
Two systemic bugs that could silently break the entire situation have been fixed: the end-situation triggers were not properly aligned with the ending event triggers (meaning the situation could reach its end state without the correct event firing), and active civil wars, specifically those involving the Great Yuan or the Sanjiao Zealots, were incorrectly blocking the Red Turban Rebellion from proceeding. Both of these could leave the situation stuck in an unresolvable state, so their fixes are significant. Finally, we've improved the overall readability of the Red Turban situation event text throughout the chain, and corrected a localization error on the Demand Annexation Cost modifier tooltip that was displaying broken text for players.
Hundred Years' War
It's been a productive stretch for the Hundred Years' War since February, and I'm happy to share what the team has been working on for one of EU5's most iconic historical situations.
The biggest new addition is the Crown a Ruler action, which gives either side a way to break a mutual union when relations have soured. This adds a meaningful diplomatic escape valve that was previously missing and felt quite frustrating in playtesting. Alongside that, we fixed a long-standing gap where "Sign a Truce" only registered on one side of the conflict, so truces are now properly bilateral as you'd expect.
We also tightened up the Betray our Allegiance action considerably. It now requires the war to have been running for at least a year before a subject can flip sides, which stops early-game opportunism, and we've blocked it entirely if your own lands are the wargoal, you shouldn't be able to betray your way out of a war you're already the prize of. Speaking of betrayal, we caught and fixed an inverted AI opinion weight bug where English subjects were actually being nudged towards flipping rather than away from it, a subtle but nasty issue that was quietly undermining English AI cohesion.
On the French side, we corrected a CB misconfiguration that was preventing France from actually taking English land through the HYW casus belli, which is rather embarrassing given that's the whole point of the situation. The CB tooltip now also correctly displays "Superiority" as the war goal. Appanage war declaration tooltips within the HYW were similarly broken and have been fixed, along with a display issue when appanages declared war on other French subjects.
The starting conditions got some rebalancing attention, too. Normandy's starting Loyalty to Overlord bonus was reduced significantly; the old value made the duchy far too stable at the start of the situation and removed a lot of the interesting tension around managing French subjects. We also pulled Douai from English cores at the situation start and cleaned up the associated Artois events, which were misfiring as a result.
Rounding out the content work, the Influence French Subject event received a full description rewrite to better communicate what's happening narratively, and the loyalty penalty was substantially increased; the old value was so mild it barely registered as a consequence. Finally, we fixed two DHE lifecycle bugs: "End of the Hundred Years War" was triggering even after the situation had already concluded, and the
English DHE now correctly resolves the situation with France as the winner when England is expelled from the continent, a satisfying and historically appropriate ending to one of history's most dramatic conflicts.
Rise of Timur
The Rise of Timur situation has seen some meaningful improvements since February, and while it's a shorter list than the Hundred Years' War, the changes are substantial in terms of how the situation plays out. The most impactful structural change is that the Timurids are now blocked from forming any other country while the situation is active. This might sound like a restriction, but it's really about preserving the identity and momentum of the situation. Timur's empire should feel like a distinct historical force, not a stepping stone to an early tag switch that bypasses the entire narrative arc.
On the other end of the situation, we added a proper auto-end condition: when the Timurids qualify to form either the Mughals or the Mongol Empire, the situation concludes automatically. This gives the situation a clean resolution that ties into the dynasty's historical trajectory and removes the awkward limbo state where the situation lingered past its natural conclusion.
The Timurid spawn logic also received significant cleanup. When Timur spawns, he now auto-annexes any AI countries he's already ruling, which previously had to be handled through a convoluted transfer chain. Related to that, we simplified the core "Rise of Timur" event itself to just directly annex the spawn country rather than going through a complex multi-step transfer, and we fixed a hole where the spawning country wasn't being properly destroyed when all its locations ended up under Timurid control anyway.
We also fixed the "Men flock to our Armies" manpower event, which could produce a negative manpower value under certain conditions, a deeply counterintuitive outcome for an event meant to represent a surge of recruits. Finally, we've given the AI an aggressiveness modifier when the situation fires, helping ensure that Timurid neighbours actually respond with the urgency and alarm that Timur's historical campaigns warranted.
Hussite Wars
Catholic powers who fought in the Hussite Wars, including the Pope, HRE members, and Bohemia's neighbours, now properly receive an end-of-war event when the situation resolves. Previously, only Bohemia and the Hussite nations heard how the war ended. Now the outcome lands for all major participants, with appropriate rewards or consequences depending on which side won.
Converting Bohemia to Catholicism after a defeat now costs significantly more than converting a smaller Hussite nation, Bohemia is the heart of the movement, and stamping it out should feel weighty. Smaller Hussite losers are still fair game for forced conversion, just at a lower price point. Tooltip text has also been fixed to correctly describe whose population you're converting.
Catholic armies fighting Bohemia can now see and use the Hussite Tribunal ability, the tool for conducting forced religious purification in Hussite provinces. It was previously hidden from exactly the armies who would want it most, due to an inverted condition. That's fixed.
Both sides were suffering from the same problem: the moment one side started losing, every eligible nation would pile on against them. AI nations now become progressively less interested in joining a war the more lopsided it already is. If the crusade is already winning handily, fewer opportunists will come along for the ride, and the same applies on the Hussite side. Wars should now reach a conclusion rather than endlessly expanding.
If Bohemia loses and is forced back into Catholicism, the ruling dynasty now converts alongside the realm. The old behaviour, a "Catholic" Bohemia ruled by privately Hussite monarchs, was both historically strange and mechanically awkward. A forced conversion of this scale leaves no one untouched.
Italian Wars
The Italian Wars situation is our most ambitious multipolar conflict system, pitting up to seven competing leagues against each other for dominance of the Italian peninsula. It has received the heaviest revision of any system in this update.
Previously, forming an Italian League required a country to clear arbitrary numerical thresholds, 12 locations and 10 regiments, that had no design rationale and often prevented the situation from playing out at all. We've removed those gates. Leagues now form based on who the three strongest Italian powers are at the start of the situation, full stop. A related fix ensures that the startup formation routine correctly initialises all leagues; previously, most of them failed to form entirely.
We've also added a Balkan League, a fourth foreign league led by the strongest Christian country in the Balkans. This rounds out the foreign powers that historically had stakes in Italian politics and gives Balkan majors a structured reason to project force westward.
Finally, the union seniority rule (which prevents a junior partner from leading a league) has been extended to cover leagues created at the situation's start, not just ones formed mid-game.
The AI logic for deciding whether to join a league has been overhauled. The previous implementation ran every six months and used a simplified scoring model that produced erratic results. It now runs monthly and evaluates three factors simultaneously: how much the AI trusts the prospective league leader, what it thinks of them diplomatically, and how its own military strength compares to the leader's. An AI that is significantly stronger than a league leader now has a real incentive to seek a better arrangement rather than remain a passive follower.
To reduce "league-hopping" during active wars, there is now a disincentive for switching leagues mid-conflict. Additionally, disloyal subjects can no longer be invited into leagues; the map mode highlighting that incorrectly marked them as eligible has been corrected.
The Italian Wars situation is now visible to any country that is rivalled, allied with, or a subject of any league leader, not just direct participants. This is a significant expansion; previously, many powers with obvious historical interest in Italian affairs had no window into the conflict.
The situation can no longer end before 50 years have elapsed, regardless of territorial control. This prevents early collapses that felt ahistorical. A related bug where the stalemate event fired even when a league had clearly won has been fixed, as has the end condition that failed to trigger even after 50 years had passed.
Two truce-related exploits have been closed. The AI will no longer use the Plan Campaign in Italy action to declare war on a target with which it has an active truce. More significantly, the join_war_as_defender intervention path could be used to bypass truce obligations; this has been corrected.
The opinion bonus for adding a country to an international organisation has been reduced from +10 per location to +0.5 per location, preventing runaway opinion accumulation in large leagues.
Location transfers between leagues have been refactored to be substantially faster.
The situation can now fire even if a country holds 200+ locations in Italy, removing a cap that prevented late-game scenarios.
New scripted trigger and effect allow other scripts to scope directly into any current Italian Wars league, simplifying event and mission authoring.
Rise of the Turks
The Rise of the Turks received a focused round of polish during this period. The diplomatic hint was rewritten to better reflect the perspective of a Byzantine player, previously it read more like a neutral observer's summary, but the situation is deeply personal for Constantinople, and the text should carry that weight. The "Request from Beylik" event also now shows distinct descriptions depending on what type of request is being made, which was a real readability gap; all requests looked the same, even when their implications were very different.
On the stability side, we fixed a case where newly created subjects were failing to join their overlord's wars on spawn, which was leaving Timurid-adjacent Beyliks awkwardly neutral in conflicts they should have been dragged into immediately. We also tracked down a frustrating edge case where a small country requesting parliament taxes could inadvertently cancel the entire situation, a completely unintended interaction that has now been closed off.
Western Schism
The Western Schism situation had accumulated a significant backlog of fixes, and we've worked through most of them. The most critical was the situation ending prematurely whenever Cardinal Seat cities were annexed, the Schism should be resilient to territorial changes and only conclude through the council process itself.
The council voting logic also received substantial attention. The third council vote failed to trigger on a tied 1-1 score, which meant the situation could deadlock without resolution. Related to this, the situation description incorrectly stated that two or more councils were required when the actual requirement was exactly two, a small wording issue, but one that was genuinely confusing players about what they needed to do. We also fixed negative day values appearing in the "days being debated" display, which was a jarring UI artifact.
Beyond the mechanical fixes, we closed several resolution bugs that were leaving the situation in a dirty state after it ended. Curia Actions were remaining blocked even after the situation concluded, the resolution was leaving the old Pope as the Catholic Church IO leader instead of installing the new one, and the io_recalculate_leader scope in the Western Schism events was scoped incorrectly. Finally, we made it impossible to mend the schism multiple times, a loophole that was allowing players to repeatedly harvest the resolution rewards.
Reformation
The Reformation saw both content additions and stability improvements during this period. On the content side, the hint panel now surfaces information about the Jesuits Allowed Policy and preacher buildings, giving players better signposting toward the Catholic counter-Reformation toolkit that previously went largely undiscovered.
We also added the Melanchthon–Constantinople dialogue event chain if Constantinople is still held by Byzantium, which explores one of the more fascinating historical counterfactuals of the period, the theological exchange between Lutheran reformers and the Eastern Orthodox church. Alongside that, we added events that inform nearby countries when the schism is mended, so the resolution actually ripples outward and feels like a world event rather than a silent state change.
On the balance side, one of the Reformation spread events can no longer fire within the first ten years after initial conversion, preventing an overly aggressive early cascade that was compressing the Reformation's timeline unrealistically. A batch of script errors in the Reformation files was also cleaned up.
Council of Trent
The Council of Trent situation was in a fairly broken state and has been substantially repaired. The most severe issue was that the Council was always resolving with a hostile outcome, regardless of the actual vote scores, meaning the counter-Reformation hardliners always won, no matter what players did. This was caused by pro- and anti-Reformation policies not being correctly allocated to their respective score tracks, and by the Protestant view outcomes never being awarded correctly, even when the scores warranted them. We also fixed an issue with voters not being properly set on resolution, which was contributing to the outcome calculation going wrong.
On the UI side, Catholic Church Policy properties are now displayed when selecting a policy to vote on during the Council, giving players the context they need to make informed decisions rather than voting blind.
War of Religions
The War of Religions received three targeted but meaningful changes. League leaders now correctly rejoin their wars after an IO leadership transfer; previously, a change in league leadership could strand the new leader outside the active conflict, which was both unrealistic and strategically exploitable.
We also differentiated how the AI and human players experience war escalation. The AI now declares war immediately on escalation, reflecting the urgency and decisiveness that historical league conflicts demanded, while human players instead receive a CB and the choice of when to pull the trigger. This asymmetry feels more satisfying; the AI world reacts with immediacy while the player retains meaningful agency. Finally, the War of Religions can no longer be ended prematurely through the Enforce Peace diplomatic action, which was allowing a dramatic and defining conflict to be quietly defused in a way that felt entirely out of keeping with the situation's historical weight.
Sengoku
The Sengoku period is the story of a feudal order tearing itself apart tier by tier, and in 1.2, we've done a lot of work to make sure the system respects those tiers correctly. War and claim events now only target clans at the same level of the hierarchy: building-based clans cannot use these events to punch directly at the Emperor or the Shogun, and landed daimyo similarly won't find themselves dragged into conflicts that should only concern their smaller, unrooted rivals. This keeps the escalation pattern feeling organic; you build up from competing with your peers before you threaten the summit.
One of the more exploitable edge cases we closed was the ability to proclaim clan independence while holding a truce with the Shogun. Logically, a truce is a promise of peace; using that window of protected time to slip out from under the Shogunate's authority was not the intended play. Independence declarations now require that no such truce is active, meaning the Shogun's diplomatic toolkit has real teeth. On a related note, the "steal locations" mechanic has been tightened so that clans can only poach territory from other Shogunate members, specifically, rather than from any valid target; this better reflects the internal political nature of the conflict.
When a building-based clan finally makes the leap to landed status, it's a transformative moment, and it now feels appropriately weighty. Clans that become landed will properly receive stockades and market villages in their newly-controlled locations, giving them an immediate defensive and economic foothold. Previously, this infrastructure wasn't being granted on transformation, which left fresh daimyo unusually vulnerable in their first critical months. We also fixed a bug where military units a clan had constructed before declaring independence could be lost in the process. Your armies now survive the transition intact, since losing the troops you trained specifically to defend your new borders was clearly unintended.
On the AI side, the Shogun's ability to issue demands has been made significantly more realistic. The AI now weighs the Shogun's current opinion standing with the target clan and their diplomatic reputation when deciding whether to push demands, meaning a Shogun with a history of broken promises or low regard will think twice before overreaching. Alongside this, acceptance reasons are now surfaced in the UI for all major Sengoku actions, so players can actually see why a clan is inclined to comply or refuse rather than reading the result as a black box. We also fixed a cosmetic but disorienting bug where invalid country targets in Sengoku actions were showing an empty tooltip instead of a clear explanation of why the action was unavailable.
Nanbokucho
The Nanbokuchō civil war, two competing imperial courts each claiming sole legitimacy over Japan, is an impactful situation, and 1.2 addresses several issues that were causing it to play out incorrectly or end prematurely. The most significant fix concerns the situation's ending condition: if an emperor was forced to abdicate through the peace treaty system, the situation was not properly recognising that as a valid conclusion and would continue running with only one court remaining. That has been corrected, so a decisive military victory that strips an emperor of their status now cleanly resolves the situation as intended.
Player-facing hints for the available court options have been substantially improved. The Nanbokuchō presents a constant low-level strategic question: which court do you back, when do you switch, and when do you declare neutrality, and the previous hint text wasn't giving players enough signal to make those decisions confidently. Clearer guidance on the downstream consequences of each option should make the situation feel less opaque for first-time players.
A particularly confusing visual bug has been fixed where clans could appear to be showing support for both the Northern and Southern courts simultaneously. In practice, this was a state corruption issue rather than an intentional dual allegiance, but it made reading the political map genuinely misleading. Related to court clarity, the Window of Opportunity event, which fires when a clan's allegiance becomes unstable and offers them a chance to change sides, was displaying the wrong emperor portrait. The end-game event summarising the conclusion of the civil war had the same problem. Both now correctly show the emperor relevant to their moment in the narrative.
The AI has received two targeted improvements for Nanbokucho. An alliance objective has been added so that the AI actively pursues court alignment rather than treating it as optional diplomatic noise, making computer-controlled clans feel like genuine political actors with a stake in the outcome. A separate spy objective for clans aligned with the third faction, the new imperial line that can emerge mid-situation, was also broken and has been fixed, meaning that faction's members will now properly pursue intelligence operations as part of their strategy.
And that’s all for today! Next week, @SaintDaveUK will be back to talk about more interesting things about Fate of the Phoenix… See you, cheers!