Historical grand strategy game Europa Universalis IV's new expansion – Origins – releases today, and recently the development team did its customary sharing of the patch notes, if you want a reminder as to what's coming.
Accompanying the newest EU4 DLC is patch 1.32 ‘Songhai’, and it contains over 450 changes according to the patch notes – so it's probably unsurprising that one of the strategy game’s associate producers has called in an “important” one. This is also a great way to separate what’s coming as part of the premium expansion, and what’s coming as part of the free patch.
Historically, content in the free patch has tended to outshine content in the premium update, but in this case things seem to be a bit more even if you discount all the fixes and quality-of-life improvements. Patch 1.32 will introduce nine new government reforms for African nations, as well as eight additional estate privileges. There are also eight new formable nations, and the infamous Zulu nation can spawn during the course of the game as well. Add to this 52 new monuments, and some reworks of existing nations.
Here’s the launch trailer for Origins:
There are also plenty of other free fixes and quality of life changes to highlight as well. You’ll now be able to see what resources are available in tribal lands, instead of it being a surprise every time.
The developers have also scaled back things like aggressive expansions, warscore, and overextension to take into account that there are now far more provinces in the game than there were when these mechanics were last balanced, which should let players take larger chunks of land at a time before running afoul of these systems.
This is already a decent amount of free content, but the Origins expansion adds 12 new missions trees, as well as new generic missions for other minor African nations across the whole continent, split into four regions. There are also new mechanics for Judaism, new unit models, and some premium estates on top of the free ones.
While it’s perhaps fair to say some of the free content is a bit more profound, Origins is still giving as good as it’s getting, which is great for those who are interested in buying the ‘immersion’ pack.
Europa Universalis IV: Origins releases today on Steam and the Paradox Store. If you’re using any EU4 mods, note that many of these will need to update to the new patch before they are playable.