Europa Universalis 4 (I’ll be using its abbreviation of EU4 from now on) is a mammoth of a game, growing since its release back in 2013 with the 34th major patch coming soon to the game accompanying 20th DLC. This evolution helmed by several different leads and with a string of poor releases lead to a game with many technical and design issues back in 2020. This is when myself and a fellow player began to use the existing modding systems to try to adjust things to our own vision of the game. EU4 for us is a game about taking nations from the high medieval period through to the early Industrial Revolution, facing both the social and geopolitical challenges these nations had both historically as well as ahistorical challenges from the dynamic changes that comes with it being a video game.
We wanted to encourage the varied styles of play for both single player as well as multiplayer, and particularly our competitive multiplayer games. We couldn’t tackle the technical bugs, as the code for the game is not open source, but the balancing we could take a stab at. As we develop the mod, the developers were the game and made 2 high quality releases of Leviathan and Origins. These critically, significantly reduced bugs or exploits that helped us significantly. While some changes were not as smooth, particularly changes to the way native american mechanics worked, on the whole these were greatly positive. This allowed us, once we had the general balance applied, to add additional flavour to nations who lacked it or create new options for players in existing regions.
Macedon
My role was primarily on the flavour side. I was focused on the new nation we added, Macedon. Based on the historic conquests of Alexander the Great, we wanted to give a Greek cultured nation that wasn’t the Byzantines more interesting options. Macedon as a playstyle is focused on expansionist and vassal play. The replication of Alexander the Great’s conquest is the core part of their mission tree but having just conquest missions leads often to the most boring play styles. So I decided to add 4 additional parts to the mission tree:
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
While Macedon was one of two nations who held every single ancient wonders of the world, or at least the sights of where they were built or to be built. The only other was the Ottoman empire. So, having Macedon look to reestablish these monuments, many of Greek heritage, would fit both with their expansionist playstyle, but also give a unique selling point of players interested in more ancient history. First the player would have to conquer the sight, and start developing it. I decided to not add a direct increase to the wonders level. Rather, I decided once each is to level 3, you would get a bonus, based on how many you have got there. This encourages the conquest playstyle but also requires a significant cash reserves, so an economic plan is also significantly important for Macedon.
Hellenism
Adding the Hellenic faith back to Greece was always an interesting option of me. Hellenism can be seen around some places in modern Greece but is by no means dominant like it was in the times of Alexander and prior to the conversion to Christianity by the Romans. As we want to create a very different feeling to Macedon than Byzantium, Hellenism was our way of doing so. I gave them personal deities to mimic the worship of individual members of the Hellenic pantheon. There are 2 missions based on the Hellenic faith, one that spawns the Hellenic faith, the other being a small bonus once Macedon has 100% religious unity giving a permeant bonus of tolerances as well as some splendor and prestige. Being Hellenic is also a prerequisite for the Statue of Zeus and Temple of Artemis as they are both are temples or found in a temple.
Succession
Alexander the Great is nearly as famous for the speed his empire fell apart after his death as his conquests. His generals divided the empire into several pieces fighting the Wars of the Diadochi. It wouldn’t really be Macedon if this wasn’t some how replicated in the nations government. To do this, I created two unique governments, with some small unique bonuses. The first, the Macedonian Empire is given my the King and Council mission as a reward, and thus is a pretty normal government. The other, the Macedonian Kingdom however has a unique event on the death of a monarch. It randomly selects a releasable nation within Macedon and gives the player the choice of releasing them as a march or dealing with a lot of pretender rebels and, if you haven’t completed the Question of Succession mission, also drops the stability by 2 rather than the normal 1. To help balance it a little bit, Byzantines and Ottomans cannot be selected to be marches, mainly because they have a huge number of cores in the area and could cause a Macedon to lose all of their provinces very quickly. While this is still theoretically possible, it is highly unlikely. This keeps Macedon from somewhat in check by dealing with rebels or dealing with unexpected and often unwanted marches.
The War of the Heavenly Horses
While researching Macedon and their successor states, I found something I through as both a little bizarre but also interesting. The Chinese Han dynasty fought the Greco-Bactrian kingdom known to them as Dayuan between 104 and 102 BC over horses. Its more complicated than that so if you want to read more up on it, have a look at this article.
But to have a short couple missions that focus on being stronger than china and taking back horses is both fun, silly and interesting. Doing so, grants a small portion of mana, prestige & power projection for either humiliating the Emperor of China or taking development in China.
Other Changes
Other areas I changed were in South East Asia. Due to the amount of trade that comes through the Malacca trade node, we decided to split off the two major Islands of Borneo and Sumatra into their own nodes. Splitting them allows for more options of directions to play within the area and to incentivise more diverse expansion options for players from Japan, China, Indochina, India, & of course those within the Indonesia archipelago.
You can find the mod on the Steam Workshop here.