Hey everyone,

I've been working on this mod for a long time, and today I'm finally releasing it. It started with a simple question: why does the AI so rarely follow the paths history actually took? It grew into something much bigger than I planned.

Imperial Ambitions pushes the AI along the great historical paths of the age and brings each one to life with events, characters and nearly 500 custom advances. Here's what's in it:

-The Rise of the Ottomans-

A full historical campaign chain, with its own casus belli and peace settlement for every stage: the Balkans and Bosnia, Anatolia, the intervention in Crimea, the Mamluk Wars (Marj Dabiq, the road to Cairo), Mohács and the three-way partition of Hungary, the Barbary coast, the Two Iraqs, and finally Vienna and the Holy League. If you play the Ottomans yourself, you get an illustrated choice event at each stage and can commit or skip.

It also adds the "Devshirme", a levy every ten years that brings trained courtiers to your court, and the "Princely Sancaks", where you can send your princes out to govern as part of their training.

-The Fall of the Golden Horde-

This is the part I'm proudest of. When the Horde's armies are broken, it splits along its historical lines: the Great Horde, Crimea, Kazan, Sibir, the Uzbeks and the Nogai. Each one starts with its real founder and family (Hacı Giray, Ulugh Muhammad, Abu'l-Khayr…), its own flag, a founding army and an advance tree.

Then the story keeps going. When Küchük Muhammad dies, his son Mahmud breaks away and founds Astrakhan. The Great Horde slowly declines and is eventually carved up by Crimea and Astrakhan. From 1550, Muscovy comes for Kazan and Astrakhan.

-More-

- 17 new Dynamic Historical Events, 12 of them for Crimea: from Bağçasaray and the Fountain of Tears to Moscow Burns and the Last Great Raid

- "A race for Iran" among the post-Ilkhanid dynasties, which ends after four consolidation wars, so Persia neither stays shattered forever nor blobs instantly

- AI restraint for states that shouldn't snowball: the Ruthenian principalities, Georgia, Wallachia, the Mamluks and Bohemia. This only applies to the AI, so you can still play them however you like

- Historical AI personalities for 30 countries

- 490 custom advances across 30+ nations, from the Jochid khanates to Burgundy, Andalusia and the Mughals

A few notes:

- It's built for EU5 1.3. I'll update it for 1.4 once 1.4 is officially released.

- Start a new game when you use it.

- It replaces a few base game files, so it will conflict with mods that edit the same ones. The full list is on the Workshop page.

Workshop link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3813524452

I'd really love to hear your feedback, bug reports and ideas. This is my first big release, so be honest. And if you enjoy it and want to support the work, there's a

Patreon:(https://www.patreon.com/cw/Airdae). The mod is and always will be completely free.

Thanks for reading!

I just finished streaming some of the 1.4 beta, where Johan popped into my chat and gave a bit of feedback. I don't think this has been mentioned anywhere else (not that I have seen anyway) so thought I'd post it here for you lot.

R5: Spain is at war with Russia at the moment and raised all levies then parked them near my border, I destroyed their navy from the previous war so they have no ship to ship them out

It’s just so good, so intuitive and it’s easily to see how your choices are actually affecting your income.

that’s all I wanted to say. I don’t see a discussion on the system on this subreddit so I thought i’d start one: What’s everyone’s opinion on it? any weaknesses?

edit: to be clear: I mean the 1.4 beta trade system. The old system (1.3 and every one before it) was frankly dogshit

R5: All Muslim countries received a massive buff this patch with the new bureaucraties. But Tlemcen specifically is a very special case, as it may now have one of the highest (if not straight up the highest) base max control ceiling in the game, and achievable fairly early at that.

Tlemcen starts with a unique government reform (only available for this tag), "Bānu 'Abd āl-Wād Investiture", providing +5% max control at 100% tribes satisfaction (the tooltip says 10% max control but it is wrong). It also gives +0.20 legitimacy and +100% tribes levy size, at the cost of an overall -25% levy size.

They can combine this with Tribal Strongholds, a Tribes privilege giving +5% max control in rural.

Add to this the new Mazalim Court bureaucracy for +10% max control with 100% entrenchment. You can easily grab it at the start of Age 2 with the Islamic Jurisprudence advance.

Add to this Barony Rule, an Age 3 government reform requiring 50+ Decentralization and 50+ Aristocracy for +5% max control in rural.

Now switch to Ibadi and you will have access to the "Centralize the Majlis 'Ammi Sa'īd" decision, requiring 28 provinces in the "Ibadi heartland of the Maghreb" and over 40 stability. This decision unlocks the "Centralized Majlis 'Ammi Sa'īd" government reform that provides yet another 5% max control (and other goodies).

Work toward the "Masters of the Sahara" decision that gives +2.5% max control as well (the requirements include having 15 provinces in the Sahara with 18+ development though and it's gonna take a while, in this campaign I have not reached this point yet).

With all this, in a core rural location with 0 proximity, you get:
20 (core) + 5 (Tlemcen unique reform) + 5 (Ibadi unique reform) + 10 (Mazalim Court) + 5 (Tribes privilege) + 5 (Barony Rule) + 2.5 (Masters of Sahara) = 52.5% base max control. Add a Bailiff on top of that and you get rural locations up to 72.5% control with 0 proximity. This is just an insane number, which again is achievable very early (at least 70%, if we ignore Masters of Sahara). Add and stack some proximity on top of it and you may very well get near 100 control in most of your land as the game goes on.

Urban locations can also reach very high ceilings with just the Tlemcen and Ibadi unique reforms combined with Mazalim Court and Masters of Sahara, along with the usual max control buffs from city rank, council halls, etc.

All this makes Tlemcen extremely rewarding to play. On top of it, switching to Ibadi also gives access to the "Claim Rustamid Legacy" decision, giving +1 cabinet seat and changes your colour to a beautiful dark blue (!!) . Ibadi also has some very strong laws, giving prosperity, morale, and one giving +50% levy size.

The start is tough as you begin at war with Morocco and Tunis, and fighting a two front war in the Maghreb with no fort to prevent them from occupying almost all of your land is not very pleasant, to say the least. But your levies are extremely strong. I had to restart quite a few times until I find an efficient way of winning this war and take max money from Morocco. Most of your land is also not core at start, so you will have to go over culture cap and accept Algerian, Kabyle, and Mozabite.

From there you slowly improve your economy (I personally built a market in Tlemcen), build a couple of forts to secure your borders, and later on take on Tunis and Morocco. In this campaign I am planning to form Morocco (tier 2) after killing it for its strong advances, then Al Andalus (tier 3), and finally Carthage (tier 4).

Overall having a lot of fun with it, and definitely recommend giving it a try. It truly feels like a rags to riches campaign, with huge early challenges but big potential rewards, well spaced during the campaign, which is something I miss a little in Eu5. I can see these numbers being nerfed because 72.5% max control with 0 proximity is just ridiculous, but I hope we keep getting this kind of love & unique rewards for underdog tags because that's exactly what makes playing these nations fun in my opinion.

i have never seen so much red..

So I started as Verona in 1.3.11. The move to 1.4 was super smooth with one caveat, please see below.

Conquered northern Italy during the Skalinger War (took about 4-5 wars running in parallel) and pressed the claims to erase the Antagonism. Basically it was me and Naples left in Italy.

After that released Florence, reconquered it immediately and released and played as Florence. That’s necessary to reset myself later to Tier 1 country again.

Conquered my former boss Verona and inherited all its vassals coalition free.

It was 1380s already so I attacked into the Ottomans and Anatolia, flipped to Turkish, and joined the Ottoman Rise situation as the leader.

That’s when 1.4 dropped and I realised that it’s beautiful — but — it drops you out of the Leader of the Turk reform as soon as you change the culture. It was too late to adjust, so I retuned to 1.3 for a few years, flipped to Bulgarian, formed Bulgaria (Tier 1), flipped to Greek and Orthodox, formed Greece (Tier 2) and Byzantium (I guess Tier 3?), reinstalled 1.4.

On the month tick the game made me Rūm (Tier 4) and then I was able to become Rome (Tier 4 or 5).

Flipped back to Catholic on demand of the HRE Emperor and that triggered the Tuscan event which turned me into Tuscany, Tier 1 again. Unfortunately, it removed my Republic and made me into a Monarchy, but fine.

After that conquered Austria with the “Restore Roman Borders” CB, flipped culture to Danube or something, and became Austria.

Currently sitting at 118 unique advances, see photo.

I guess my next plan is to go East and become Manchu, then form Russia for all the proximity bonuses, and eventually China via the Manchu event. Then maybe HRE?

If anyone has any suggestions, please share!

did not play the game for a while but 1.4 changed everything. the game runs smooth and is very fast now. i love it! excited for the future of euV

r5: Started this ERE to Roman Empire campaign back when 1.2 first dropped. It took a while but after 5 months i finally can say that im proud of how this turned out.

Greetings on this most glorious of days. I, eva3071, have released v3.0 of the mod for the public. This is pretty much my first substantive update of the mod, while version 1.0 and 2.0 were basically barebones. This, I hope, fixes the underlying problems for the Eastern Roman Empire that was present in patch 1.0 of Europa Universalis V, and subsequently the added problems to the Roman State in patch 1.2 "Echinades"

Here are the changes:

-Features-

Eastern Roman Empire:
1. Has 4 unique government reforms, and reworked 12 unique governments.
2. Has new "Acclamation Succession" succession law.
3. Has 3 new unique policies.
4. Has access to the generic asian advances that the Ottomans have access to.
5. Reworked Municipia Privileges.
6. New unique societal value to replace the old one: Rhomanismós vs Hellenismós.
7. Slight rework to the Fate of the Phoenix cabinet actions.
8. 7 new events, 20 new decisions, and 1 unique estate privileges.
9. Reworked Pronoia Subject. Komnenian and Reformed Pronoia enable
non- hereditary pronoia subjects.
10. Latinized Greek translations of areas and provinces for the Roman imperial
borders.
11. Megalopolis is now Metropolis
12. Reworked the ERE's game start to be more historical.
12. the Eastern Roman Empire now has proper glorious tyrian purple color.
13. Orthodox Christianity, as the imperial faith, also has glorious tyrian purple color.
14. Greek culture has glorious modern greek blue color.
15. New Event that grants the owned location of Rome the historical capital
modifier.
16. New event that allows stateless cultures in the Empire to approve their cultural
opinion of your primary culture.

Of course, it would be remiss to let you know that while the mod itself is complete, the vanilla patch v1.4.0 open beat is and Open Beta, so play at your own risk. The mod itself is sound, and is structured in such a way that the innumerable and unrelenting updates Paradox Tinto is going to do to v1.4 won't cause the mod to become out of date. Think of it as early access until Tinto drops the public version of v1.4.

You can find the mod on steam at:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3604070407

You can also find my discord channel Heaven Can Wait Modworks at:
https://discord.gg/93dN9Y6c3

Enjoy!

I'm playing the beta and for some reason England have a part of Anatolia...BASED AI !!!

wiki outdated and non informative

debug mode are wonky

so here we are

https://grackbox.github.io/eu5-formables/

enjoy

if u have suggesion please leave a comment

Just a little rant, but the “ask to improve cultural opinion” diplomatic action needs some work.

Why can you not officially do this with subjects? I’m certainly able to every once in a while, but I feel like it’s a bug? The option is never there in the diplomacy tab, but sometimes the reminder pops up at the top of the screen and I can?

Other times I have to release the vassal to do it, and then just instantly declare on them to grab them back. Feels very gamey and cheesy.

The 50 favour requirement also feels extremely steep for countries that aren’t your vassal, as they usually have a 20-25 favour cap.

For vassals, I think it should be made into a vassal diplomatic action that gives them some liberty desire and costs some money or something, and maybe have the favour cost lowered a little for non vassal countries. Maybe make it so they have to have +150 or even +200 opinion to balance it out.

I dunno… what do y’all think about the current state of the “ask to improve cultural opinion” diplo action?

the main driver of colonization wasnt the "new world" but rather pop migration due to famine, lack of food, overcrowding, taxation. theres no system showing stability really closest is pop satisfaction.
a lot of countries solved their petty crime with exile, a lot of drunkards and pickpocketers were put on boats to america. instead of the devs trying to nerf popgrowth there should be a gradual expansion of housing in urban areas and if that goes over people will migrate to the new world.
theres already an issue to jumpstart colonies as this system isnt mapped out.
people right now are minmaxxing taxation as theres no real penalty to just tax as much as u can.
if taxation goes to far there should start to be a natural migration to new world.
expelling pops of the wrong culture should have a buff that all mixed cultures have less of a dissatisfaction in new colonies.
colonies should play wide and not tall. most people didnt go there to be crammed in urban areas but rather be homesteaders on the frontier where also you cant tax homesteaders efficiently

83 years since 1750, and things got a little out of hand 😂

In those 83 years, I managed to completely conquer Germany, Ruthenia, the Baltics, Northern Italy, Tunisia, the Maghreb and Denmark.

My income is now roughly equal to the combined income of the 50 countries below me.

I probably could have conquered a lot more, but doing this earlier would have meant dealing with low control, endless rebellions and all the usual headaches. I also really don't like using vassals, so I prefer to keep everything under direct control.

So I basically waited until the right age, then decided to do 500 years of conquest in 80 years instead. 😂

Could I have expanded even further? Absolutely.

Another big hit to centralization. I was able to go full centralized and have tons of vassals thanks to dominion flip. I guess not anymore..
Have you guys found any new strats for vassal-maxing?

Its converting 0 pops a month even though there is so much green modifiers.

Each region has their history.

Countries come and go, technology progresses, crafts develop. But we assume that, for the full stretch of 500 years, the main materials extracted and the overall economy in a location will stay the same.

This does not feel alive.

There are locations, where livestock grazes in 1337 and despite in reality this would become a place of mining and industry, we are going to see livestock being the RGO in 1837.

There are locations which are nothing but wilderness and would be suitable to nothing but fur trade - but because in 1750, gold will be discovered there, we'll start 1337 with a gold RGO.

This is an attempt to making things more dynamic.

I upgraded the [RGO Mod] to allow for progressive research unlocks, bound by the region and defined by history.

There are 72 Regions in the game, with topography, vegetation and climate (and people), and a lot happens within 500 years. Getting this structured was a headache.

Here is the approach, done for each region:

1. Research the region's history across the 500 years (economics, trade, politics, ..)
2. Cluster this history into the EU5 ages (Traditions, Renaissance, Discovery, ...)
3. Derive what Goods where of greatest relevance in that Region, in the given EU5 age
4. Map the EU5 goods to those real goods
5. Determine reasonable boundary conditions where those goods could be RGO'd (e.g. only coastal zones in Anatolia for cotton in Agen of Reformation - yes, i also was very surprised) - so that we don't end up with spamming whatever RGOs just everywhere, and keep close to history
6. Add a Region-specific research item to unlock this RGO in the (Topography x Vegetation x Climate)
7. Test, Test, Test (and still not everything can be tested - I'm relying on the community here to get feedback and bug reports, pls feel encouraged to send a message :) )
8. Release - Today. Yay!

One Example: East Coast is one of 72 Regions in EU5

When unlocked, what unlocked, on which tiles, and how many tiles are eligible to be converted

East Coast

Region key: east_coast_region Land locations: 648

Story

Age of Traditions. Eastern Woodlands peoples: maize-beans-squash agriculture, fishing, and deer hunting; wampum and fur internal trade. No wheat or iron industry.

Age of Renaissance. Atlantic coast increasingly visited by fishers; fur trade with external contacts. Indigenous agriculture stable in the interior. Lumber extracted from dense forests.

Age of Discovery. English and Dutch colonies (Virginia, New England): tobacco, cod, and fur; maize adopted by settlers. Timber (shift to renaissance) for ships and potash.

Age of Reformation. Tobacco and fur exports peak; grain production grows in middle colonies. Naval stores (pitch, tar) from pine forests.

Age of Absolutism. Diversified colonial exports: tobacco, rice (south), wheat and livestock (middle), fish and timber (north). Iron furnaces appear in northern colonies late.

You can imagine that doing this for 72 regions is a massive effort, and there will be inaccuracies in this first release. Yet I hope this will open the door towards a more dynamic, and more strategic playstyle around what is the basis of the EU5 economy: RGOs.

I think this event was clearly meant for anatolia. Kinda funny that it can just trigger in regions that are not and were never muslim lol