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Europa Universalis 4 Cossacks expansion dev diary shows off cunning spies, massive hordes, lying about religions

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Do you like ludicrously complicated strategy games first thing in the morning, readers? I hope so, because this Europa Universalis dev diary for the latest expansion, the Cossacks, has as many new knobs and buttons and dials and angry rich men to deal with as your average casino security room. Project lead Martin Anward introduces and runs through it all with the calm tones only game developers can summon while talking about murderous 16th century politics.

More strategy in your morning coffee with our best of.

I’m not going to pretend I actually understand most of this, but every time something new was introduced I nodded and said “that makes sense” – they’re logical systems that emulate the real world closely enough to seem sensible. They’re also piling on more complexity to a game famed for it and a community that demands it, letting them further micromanage empires, inevitably mess it up and have exciting adventures in crumbling power bases.

The video brings together a number of dev updates that have been posted on the official forums. The most recent of these is about the random new world feature and wasn’t covered in the video. It changes the layout and culture of what is America in real-life to be wackier, weirder and unexpected, just as it was for the pilgrims who made that murderous voyage however many years ago. They don’t teach us American history over here. We have to know about Bannockburn instead.

The expansion is releasing on the 1st of December. Even if you don’t pick it up, a number of features will be launching as part of a free update as well.