[2023] Developer Diary - 1.35 Retrospective

A lil somethin somethin: You can find the details for this event on the announcement page here.

Greetings, and welcome everyone to the last Dev Diary of the Domination cycle! We’ve been active in the forums and receiving your feedback about this expansion and the 1.35 ‘Ottomans’ update for almost 7 months, and now it is time to retire for a well-deserved Summer break. But before we do that, let’s have a retrospective of the past months.

First is first, on June 20th we released the 1.35.4[forum.paradoxplaza.com] patch, and on June 27th and July 4th the 1.35.5[forum.paradoxplaza.com] and 1.35.6[forum.paradoxplaza.com] hotfixes. We think that the most important and urgent reported issues have been addressed, making this the final and stable version of the 1.35 update. Releasing them has been demanding for us, especially 1.35.6, as the Summer Break has already started in other regions, making releases more difficult; but we thought that fixing most of the reported CTDs would make for the better stability we were looking for, and therefore worth it.

Generally speaking, we’re very thankful for the reception of Domination. This expansion was an ambitious project, as we were working on and creating content for most of the Great Powers of the Modern Age at the same time, something never done before in Europa Universalis IV. This was challenging, as the polishing and balancing of the game were set to be the most difficult tackled by Paradox Tinto since our tenure of EUIV started. In this regard, our QA Team did an amazing job, and they deserve to be praised for it; for every bug that slipped through and was reported in the release version, at least 5 had already been internally reported and fixed. Unfortunately, sometimes things will still slip through the cracks - yes, the Chinese floods will haunt us for a while! This is just a sign that even as we we're confident with our QA processes, there's still room for improvement with every new release.

Speaking of the content, we also put a great effort into making the most possible for this expansion. There was also a great challenge regarding this, as most of the countries had already received content in previous DLCs. What we tried to do is to integrate as much as possible the previous systems, mechanics, and features with the new content, which was designed to expand the possibilities and gameplay options of some of the most-played countries of the game. That is, to create new experiences in a 10-year-old game. For some countries, we achieved this better than with others, I think; but we’ll keep working on improving their balance and polish, in order to make Domination a truly must-have DLC. Also, following this line of thought, we have increased the depth of the game, by adding the new, scriptable government system, more reforms and privileges, the new idea groups, etc., for an even deeper experience.

This is something that will make for some of our future plans: keep working on improving the base game and older DLCs as we work on new content. This is the design philosophy of PDX Tinto regarding EUIV’s development, and we’ll continue to work this way in the following months, going through the reports made in the Bug Reports subforum[forum.paradoxplaza.com], and gathering the feedback we receive from the community. Coupled with this, we had the release of a new type of DLC, the History Lessons, which albeit not being a massive one, it’s a nice companion to Domination, already having generated interest in players desiring to know more about the History of China and Japan while they play.

Before I finish, I want to note that next month we will be celebrating something that I already mentioned: Europa Universalis IV’s 10th Anniversary! This is really great for Paradox as a whole, as this is the longest-lasting title ever published by the company, and it also makes our Team, led by the original Game Director Johan, to be quite proud of this achievement. Our Marketing Team is also working hard to celebrate with you the history of EUIV throughout the entire month of August, as well!

With nothing more to say to you than thank you for your support with Domination and during these 10 years, I say goodbye until Autumn, when we will talk again about new content for the game. Goodbye!