EU4 Origins
EU4 Origins has been released today and I'm happy to announce same day support in Rakaly. Thankfully the expansion is a flavor pack so there weren't any major changes necessary for Rakaly other than tweaks and adding achievements. But I still put together some of my musings so the blog would have an update as it's been a couple months since the last one! Also big things are in store for Rakaly in the near future so stay tuned.
It was communicated that Origins wasn't supposed to have map changes and I can verify that is true. The map assets were not touched (as verified by their checksums). Which makes it semi-fascinating that the map was touched more through 1.31 patches (eg: New Zealand South Island province positioning + terrain changes) than an expansion.
And since the map didn't change, we're free to reuse 1.31 map assets for 1.32 in Rakaly, which should make things quicker when switching between analyzing 1.31 and 1.32 saves.
For those curious about the exact changes from from 1.32's changelog
- Changed the Climate and the Terrain of some provinces of the Horn of Africa.
Those provinces are:
- Kismayo (2774): from savannah to farmlands
- Merca (2775): from savannah to farmlands
- Warsheikh (2782): from desert to steppes
- Barawa (2794): from savannah to farmlands
- Pate (2796): from coastline to farmlands
Yup all these provinces are on the coastline of the horn of africa, so this region received a buff to those nations.
There's a couple decorative province changes, like how the High Plains area has been renamed to the Hautes Plains.
Judaism is implemented exactly (or at least represented the same way in a save) as Protestantism.
16 new achievements are a lot. Half of them are already implemented in Rakaly:
- Ultimate Military: As Songhai, have Prussia and Nepal as marches!
- Where are the Penguins: As a Malagasy country, unite Madagascar and hold all the most southern provinces of the world
- Knights of the Caribbean: As the Knights, own the Caribbean and every island in the Mediterranean. (Colonies are NOT allowed)
- Australia-Hungary: Starting as an Australian tribe unite Australia and subjugate Hungary
- Shemot is Not: As a Jewish nation, convert all of Egypt to Jewish while having the Jewish Community Aspect active.
- Swahili Persuasion: As Kilwa, convert all of the Moluccas and Indonesia
- I don't like sand: Have the most development while owning no province with terrain other than desert or coastal desert.
- Atwix Legacy: Have 10 personal unions at the same time.
The remaining ones are bugged at the game level (eg: KHAAAAAAN which requires starting as a nation that doesn't exist at the start date) or seem too arbitrary for me to implement them (eg: Imposter Syndrome which requires countries to discover your spies).
Thanks to the generosity of Paradox for allowing me early access, without which I would not have been able to accomplish a same day update.
What's Next?
There's a huge update coming to Rakaly. It's not quite ready to be shown off to the world, but how Rakaly will look and feel will be dramatically different. The goal is to highlight Rakaly's features and streamline it for new users. Here's some of the high level changes:
- Analyzing a save right from the home page
- The new map should be more prominent and immersive
- Add more info overlays to the map
- While mobile users are not the focus of Rakaly, one should have an easier time to explore and do basic tasks on a mobile device.
- De-emphasize achievement leaderboards. The leaderboards will still stick around and be continuously supported. Rakaly was originally billed as a casual leaderboard site, but it turns out that far more people enjoy the analysis and sharing aspect of Rakaly. So achievements may turn more into a pseudo tagging system in order to filter saves or have an at-a-glance view of the save with leaderboard view available to those who desire it.
The goal is to make this new update available before the end of the year, so keep an eye out for it!