Hello everyone! Ryagi here, your friendly neighborhood community manager. As promised, this week we’ll be taking an early look at expeditions. Before we get too deep into them though, we have a caveat to stress first.
Expeditions are still under development, and as we’re actively continuing to test and iterate on them in the places we can. We see a system like this as a potential solution to making exploration more engaging, but we’ve not fully implemented all the required components to promise that yet anytime soon. For this reason, we want to stress that this is an early look so we can get feedback from you, the community! If we successfully implement any of the design ideas in the oven, we’ll let you know in the future Tinto Talks.
What are expeditions?
With that out of the way though, let’s dive into what expeditions are currently, so that you can give us the feedback we’ll use to make them even better! The Expeditions showcased today will be part of the 1.4 Free Update. But as many of you have guessed, some expeditions will be exclusive to Across the Pillars. We’ll show those ones off at a later date!
Off he goes!
At the end of their journey, you will be presented with various outcomes depending on the expedition you choose, and sometimes what decisions and resources you have brought with you along the way.
How we used UI and Art to give Expeditions More Flavor
Throughout EU5’s life, one of the most common pieces of feedback we have received is on the UI. And this makes sense, both Art and UI as a whole serve the crucial role of communicating to the player the content and gameplay itself, so it’s a very important factor. Many players have felt that UI should have more flair to it, more texture, and more “feeling”. So the teams here have taken much of that feedback these past few months and gone for a more flair forward approach when designing the art and UI for Expeditions.
We’ve known for a long time that the fan base has been yearning for better graphically interesting UI design elements and more visual interactions, so we tried to focus much more on those aspects for this feature.
The artistic goal for the expeditions was to achieve a more engaging and immersive visual end result than any of our prior features. So we took some of our best current graphical features like the dynamic event illustration system, custom background layers, portraits and character expressions, with new visual effects like animated buttons and animated dialog containers and put it all together into what the final project we now know was the expedition system.
3D character models are shown in all their glory, many expeditions utilize unique icons in their selection panel, and panels have more color and texture in general. Art is very subjective, so let us know what you think! Do you enjoy this more flair heavy approach?
Now that you have an idea of what expeditions are, let’s get to the part where we show some examples!
Expedition Examples
Now that we’ve talked about what expeditions are, and what flavor they offer, let’s look at some currently existing examples. Reminder all of these are work in progress, so we’re going to be using your feedback where we can.
Circumnavigation
Circumnavigation is a prestigious expedition that lets your nation participate in the race that is “Who can sail all the way around this big oblate spheroid first”. Of course what’s the point of exploring new places without bringing back some loot right? So in this instance you get cloves which are then sold at market price for ducats.
This expedition is an example of one with resources. These resources somewhat abstracted, but they should add a small layer of spice to the expedition. Running out of provisions means low morale… low morale means mutiny and mutiny means you can say goodbye to your dreams of circumnavigation.
If you do succeed though, being the first to circumnavigate yields some useful bonuses!
Treasure Fleet
The Treasure Fleet is an expedition unique to the Middle Kingdom that can be dispatched following the “Age of Treasure Voyages” event. It is political in nature and is bound to have profound impact for the countries in its path.
The Treasure Fleet can be started by using an action in the Middle Kingdom IO where the country is given a choice of the target destination, the leader character and the voyage cargo amount. The stats of the expedition leader can have a minor impact on the expedition - military skill reduces the loss of cargo on negative events while the diplomatic skill will increase the chance for visited countries to make choices that benefit China.
In addition to the expedition view, the treasure fleet also has its own GUI view in the Middle Kingdom which showcases additional information about the expedition - Voyage Cargo, the quantity of Gifts Received and the Countries Visited:
Looks like the treasure fleet is paying off.
As the expedition advances towards its target, the fleet will discover locations in its way. Most importantly though, it will take detours towards local prominent ports, pausing the exploration and interacting with the locals. It is during those stops that the political nature of the fleet comes into play.
As the fleet arrives in ports, it will use the allocated voyage cargo to shower the locals with gifts.
While in port, events occur that give the host country a choice to seek favor of their visitors or to take a hardline stance. Each side has its own benefits - the submissive stance can see the country become a distant member of the Middle Kingdom IO with benefits to Outward societal value and tribute benefits, while an arrogant stance will provide power projection, noble satisfaction and subject loyalty. Not all weight is in the final outcome though - some of the pulse events can significantly alter the local politics as well.
Looks like Malacca was able to secure the help of the expedition against Manjung…
As the Middle Kingdom, you will receive information about visited ports, occurrences happening in visited countries and events where you may exchange the voyage cargo. Be wary of the seas too - they hold their own dangers to your fleet and their cargo.
Arrogance shall reap what it has sowed!
Those pirates should have picked an equal!
Sowing the seed for a legend…
One of events that can occur for the Emperor while the fleet is stationed at a port
Once the treasure fleet returns, the Middle Kingdom receives a flurry of events, summarizing the impact of the expedition, the gifts it received, as well as any other important occurrences (like an extradited dissident or a foreign ruler that got captured.)
The fool thought he could escape justice!
What other wonders can you receive from the locals besides Persian blue?
Pilgrimage & Hajj
The Great Pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Royal Hajj to Mecca are two very important religious expeditions for Catholics and Muslims respectively. They are slightly different mechanically, so let us cover them separately.
As the Great Pilgrimage is dispatched, the expedition will attempt to visit as many Catholic Holy Sites as possible. Each visited holy site adds to the count and furthers the benefits from the expedition.
Would Edward III also have struck down Thomas Becket, had he been the king?
Finally, the ruler will go on to visit Jerusalem and might visit additional sites on their way back. Once the trip is over, the visited sites without events will tally up to determine the clergy satisfaction and legitimacy reward.
Jerusalem, at last!
The Royal Hajj meanwhile is focused more on the journey, rather than the destinations. As the ruler departs for Mecca, they take on an entourage of guards and aim to complete their travel within the same year, else they fail their pilgrimage. Depending on what part of the world the Hajj is started from, the expedition will aim to visit one of the important cities of Islam - Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad or Jeddah.
As the expedition gets ready to depart, the country may pay additional cost in gold to get extra guards for the journey and to increase the splendor of their entourage. The last option also offers additional benefits - picking up the mahmal on the route will award the pilgrim with additional options in events that allow for gaudy displays of wealth. It can also be lost as a result of raids - so make sure you have plenty of guards to protect your expedition!
No character more fitting to perform a famous pilgrimage with!
As the journey unfolds, our pilgrim ruler will encounter many events before them, some of them being an opportunity to increase the splendor of their trip and some of them revealing the dangers of the road. There is but another concern within those events that can put your journey in jeopardy - if our aspiring Hajji loiters around too much, they can fail the expedition due to time requirements. It is therefore important to balance the time commitment and other rewards, especially if you are traveling from far away!
The mahmal and the entourage must be protected at all costs!
Hiring a guard a day keeps the raider away.
Finally, once the pilgrim has reached Mecca, they will perform the rites as expected. If the ruler has accrued plenty of splendor during their route, the country will receive additional prestige rewards that are scaled with that splendor here.
Will you display humility or your wealth?
And once the character returns from their pilgrimage, they will receive benefits worthy of a Hajji in the final event.
The tales of your deeds are told from Mali to Mecca!
Wrapping up
We hope this first look has given you an idea of what expeditions have in store. Let us know what you think below, we’d love to hear your thoughts.
Unfortunately we’ll be skipping next week's Tinto Talk. And that’s primarily because I (Ryagi) will be occupied in Germany at Gamescom! (If you happen to be there feel free to find me and say hi), while the rest of the team is continuing their hard work on 1.4. And to be clear, this does NOT mean that Europa Universalis will have anything to show at gamescom.
As you might have noticed, due to development priorities we have now diverged from our originally shared Tinto Talks schedule. To make up for that, here are some pointers for what’s coming next before the 1.4 beta:
Catholicism Updates
Small surprise 1.4 feature + Other UI Quality of Life
Economy, and some nice 1.4 trade additions
We’ll be covering the above before we get into Across the Pillars.
With that said, we’ll see you later! Have an extra happy Wednesday to make up for next week.
Stay Ambitious!