Hearts of Iron IV and Crusader Kings III aren't the only grand strategy games working towards a new release – the Europa Universalis IV developers at Paradox Tinto are also working on a new content pack for the historical strategy game. This follows on from the Leviathan expansion earlier this year.
The focus of the next pack will be on new missions, graphics, and music, with sub-saharan Africa the star of the show. Mali has the honour of being looked at first, and this week’s dev diary gives us a look at the nation’s general situation in 1444 (the game’s start date). We also get a glimpse at the new mission tree. Mali is in a state of decline during this period, and player’s will have to navigate plenty of disasters in order to keep themselves from collapsing into oblivion.
The new mission tree is split into three distinct parts: reconquering former territory held by Mali during its heyday, dealing with various disasters, and even a little bit of colonisation, which is based on the legends of Abu Bakr. You’ll be able to found a colony in South America by following this branch. Other goals for Mali include purchasing land in Europe, and even crashing the European economy by flooding the markets with gold and ducats!
At the end of August, Paradox Tinto studio manager Johan Andersson published a developer update looking at the current state of the game, as the studio focused much of its efforts on bug fixes after Leviathan’s troubled launch.
Andersson goes over some metrics for the game, detailing things like most popular game mode (non-ironman single player), most popular country (England), even the most used EU4 mod (Graphical Map Improvements).
Paradox Interactive has had an eventful time recently, with CEO Ebba Ljungerud stepping down and being replaced by the original CEO Fredrick Wester, as well as some damning survey results from two Swedish labour groups that suggest a hostile working culture for women.
There is currently no timetable for the upcoming EU4 content pack, although the next developer diary will look at Songhai.