Hey all! Ryagi back to give you another Mod Spotlight, this time we're taking a short dive into the alternate history world of Post Finem. Lead dev, Chewy does a great job introducing you straight into that world, so I'll let him take it away!

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Hello everyone! My name is Chewy and I am the lead developer for Post Finem (and I’m also the guy who watches the AI ruin itself on YouTube).

For those who don’t know what Post Finem is, it is an alternate history overhaul mod for Europa Universalis IV that aims to answer the question: What if it was CARTHAGE that was victorious in the Punic Wars, and Rome was dismantled upon their completion?
Of course everyone has their ideas of how alternate history should unfold and what is “realistic” and “unrealistic,” and at the end of the day, the beauty of fiction is that reality is often even stranger!

The lore dump is available on the wiki (still WIP, but will answer a lot of questions): https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Post_Finem/Lore_Dump

Taking a look at the map you will see that Europe, northern Africa, as well as eastern Asia are very different, and that is for good reason! You will also notice some very sweeping changes in Arabia, the Horn of Africa, and into southern India, but that is yet unreleased content that we will explain toward the end of this showcase. So, stick around, because it’s content we’re VERY excited to release!

The political map of Post Finem in 1444, with Carthage a shell of its former glory.Without the rise of the Romans, there is a very large cascading effect on history. Without Rome, Christianity fails to take off and encompass much of the Western world. The Hellenic pantheon remains dominant in the east, while the Punic pantheon becomes the de facto faith in the west, even pushing into the Italian peninsula via trade relations and political pressures. The Carthaginian Empire continues to grow, incorporating all of Mauretania, Iberia, and southern Gaul into the fold. This is fairly evident when you look at the religious map of the mod.

The religious mapmode in 1444, with a diverse array of faiths throughout the entire scope region. Keep an eye on the Romana in northern Italia, as well as the Evangelos and Jewish provinces in northern Arabia.For the sake of brevity, we will explain that the so-called “barbarians” of Gaul, Germania, Slavia, and Scandinavia were mostly unaffected by the Punic and Hellenic worlds, as external forces were often viewed as “untouchable” and thus there was ever interest in pursuing conquest in the lands to their north. That allowed these faiths, although evolving internally over the centuries, to remain relevant in their homelands.
These nations have a diverse cast of players, with multiple formable nations and dozens of unique mission trees scattered throughout the regions.

A few notable examples are:
Saxony, whose mission tree pushes them to unite Germania, proclaiming the Konigreich of Germania, and beyond.
The Ostgermanic nations of Ostholm and Vildheim, pushing to unite Ostgermania as Donova, and eventually mend the schism that exists between the Germanic and Ostgermanic peoples.
Kashubia, the de facto leader of the Slavic world, uniting Severoslavia, and eventually incorporating the Jugoslavians to form Slavia, with unique additions to the mission tree along the way.

Though the Gaelic peoples of Gaul and the Celtic Isles have embraced the feudal government system, the vast woods and highlands of northern Europe remain primarily in a tribal structure, with the Feudalism institution yet to be present.And while on the topic of government structure, the Zoroastrian Empire of Persia must be brought up, having recently (within the last 300 years) pushed the Selecuid Greeks from the Persian heartland and established a regional governance system known as the Satrapies.

The Satrapy system demands specific conquests and freedoms granted to the special subjects in exchange for more efficient governance of the borderlands of the Persian Empire. This lends itself to a VERY unique gameplay experience for anyone looking to utilize a vassal swarm game.There are currently over 60 unique mission trees in the mod, and I can’t show off all of them, but I will happily show off a few of my personal favorites that I feel showcase the talent of the contributors and developers that work(ed) on the mod since it started last August.

Carthage, the shadow of the once great Carthaginian Empire, exists in its heartland, governing a few loosely incorporated vassal nations in the region. The Qahal, the parliamentary system utilized by Carthage, rules the nation and dictates a lot of the internal politics of Carthage.

Their mission tree will push them to reconquer their lost territory and beyond, all the while industrializing their nation and reclaiming the glory of their once great name.

Macedonia is another formerly great nation, experiencing civil war after civil war for the past few centuries, with small breaks here and there to lose territory to outside forces. In 1444 they are ruled by a weak king of the Philoxenos dynasty, with the military War Cabinet dictating military organization and operations

Starting in a precarious circumstance, Macedonia must be careful not to get involved in costly wars early as their low Organization will lead to low military quality. If Organization were to hit 0, the War Cabinet may just coup the Basileus!

The Macedonian mission tree, as you would expect, pushes them to reconquer the lost lands of the once-great empire of Alexander, complete with flavorful events, and the opportunity to rule southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and Aegyptos as personal unions.

Though the Hellenic world is ripe for reform, as the Hellenic pantheon has centralized dramatically over the past thousand years, with the Archonic Hierophantate of Athens dictating the beliefs and doctrines of the Hellenic faithful. Not everyone, however, is happy with that, and a certain conservationist movement known as the “Paradosi” have been making moves, primarily in the eastern portions of the Hellenic world. This is not even to mention the Kemetic synergist movement happening within Aegyptos, which is due to reach a boiling point within a few decades of the game start..

Over in Italia sits the land of the Italian Federation, an institution which was initially formed to act as a defensive alliance network to deter direct Carthaginian incursions into the Italian peninsula from their bases on Sardinia and Sicily. Over the centuries the Federation has reformed its contractual obligations, centralizing around a “Grand Adirim,” a lifetime appointed ruler to oversee the large scale operations of the federation. There is a lot of internal strife between the Punic majorities of Italia and Illyria, and the latin Romana minorities of the northern Portions, primarily in the Kingdom of Italia.

The new interface for the Italian Federation coming to Post Finem in the 1.2 update, complete with 24 possible reforms and the “Religious Tension” mechanic that acts as an engine to drive the Religious Leagues toward their inevitable conclusions. More on REDACTED at a later date. Of course, centralization will allow the Adirim to unite the Federation under the Roman banner, reclaiming that long-dead name.

There is a lot of content to enjoy within the Federation. The Federal Seat of Roma, looking to unite the Federation under one banner, ruling with their special subjects, the Principates. The electorate of Sardinia, ruling the waves and challenging the piratical menace that plagues the Mediterranean.
But perhaps one of the most impactful and engaging nations within the Federation would be Italia, the Romana minority leaders.

Italia is poised to challenge the Punics, especially following their persecution at the hands of the Scarlet Delegation, instituted by the Adirim in the year prior to game start.

But for those looking for a power fantasy, look not further than the rump state of the Seleucid Kingdom. Despite falling very far from the powerful position they once occupied, the Seleucids are very much not to be counted out.

The Seleucid mission tree pushes for massive conquests, uniting the Hellenic world, all the while buffing their already powerful military, becoming the undisputed militaristic hegemon of the world. The branching missions open up upon the initialization of the Paradosi reformation of the Hellenic pantheon, allowing Seleucia to reform and lead the reformation, or reject it and defend the Archon’s Diktat!

And those are just to name a few of the many beautifully crafted mission trees in the mod.
On top of mission content, there are HUNDREDS of flavor events, including an entire rework of the colonial game and the new world, unique national ideas for almost every single new nation on the map, large generic mission trees that are shared across regions, such as the non-Saxon Germanic nations, and much, much more.

We have also adopted the “Ante Bellum” system of updates for Post Finem, focusing heavily on specific regions of the map and going all-in on injecting them with as much engaging flavor and content as possible.

The 1.1 update, the “New Horizons” update pushed large changes to Iberia, including 3 new formable nations (Boraliber, Gadrium, and Kusi-Iber), each complete with unique mission trees, as well as a rework to the map of Mauretania, introducing new tags, a regional mission tree, and Mauretania formable, complete with a unique and powerful mission tree, as well as a rework of the entire new world, trade nodes, colonial nations, and post-colonial formable nations, all complete with shared or unique mission trees and national ideas. It was huge!

Currently the 1.2 update, the “Sons of Abraham” update is DEEP in development, and we are announcing today that it will be released on Friday, the 21st of June!
This update overhauls Arabia, the Horn of Africa, and southern India, introducing 3 new Christian religions (Evangelos, the Levantine Christians, Sevasam, the Indian Christians, and Concetus, the Italian Christians), the Jain religion, and a rework to the Arabic religion. All religions included in the 1.2 update are receiving mechanics, with Evangelos and Jain receiving entirely custom mechanics, created from scratch!

The Evangelos faith is focused around spreading the faith, either by diplomacy or by the sword, and will lead to powerful buffs along the way, ultimately pushing for the unification of the Evangelos world into a united tag, the Theodokos.

The Jain faith focuses on enlightenment, and each of the 3 colored hands can be clicked to reveal various “paths” that enlightenment can be spent on, granting various bonuses that stack nicely.

There will be dedicated mission content for many nations, with many more sharing regional mission trees that expand upon forming various nations such as Arabia, Dilmun (Gulf of Persia), Munifara (Horn of Africa), Sumukiun (Southern India), and many more!

The top portion of this tree is available in 1444 to Heliopolis, the leader of the Sacred Empire of Christ, with the bottom portion being unlocked upon unification of the Theodokos via the Christian Zeal mechanic shown previously.

The Munifara mission tree, with the shared portion being built upon by the yellow portion (East African vs Semetic tech groups vs coastal Somalian nations) and the red portion upon uniting the Horn and forming Munifara.

The Indo-Greek nation of Simylla, a one province minor in western India, has the ability for grow far beyond their 1444 borders and unite India as Yavana, unlocking this BEEFY mission tree to aid them in their conquests.

And the last mission tree to show for 1.2 will be Zulfaar, the theocratic center of the Islamic world, based in Yemen. The holy city of Taiz, the spiritual center of Islam, where the prophet Mohammed (PBUH) established the faith.
Their theme will be to unite Arabia and the Horn, pushing beyond, and developing the home lands, creating a beautiful homeland for the Islamic peoples.

All of that to show that we are VERY excited for what is to come in the near future for Post Finem.

If you are interested in participating in an open beta for 1.2, we will be opening the Discord server up to it on June 7th, so hop in and expect a ping before too long!
Additionally, Patrons to Post Finem get early access to the development alpha builds, so check that out in the Discord as well if that sounds appealing to you and you want to support development.
https://discord.gg/postfinem

Thank you all for taking the time to read about my little mod! I hope you enjoy playing Post Finem as much as I have enjoyed working on it over the past ~10 months!

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We hope you enjoyed this Mod Spotlight. Even you Rome lovers (The Glory of Rome would surely never fail us as depicted here). If any of this sounds interesting to you, check out Post Finem over on steam workshop.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3142739241

If you're interested in some of Chewy's other work, you can find our mod spotlight on his other overhaul mod, Land of the Free[forum.paradoxplaza.com], and his YouTube over at both Chewyshoot and Chewbert[http//%27https]

We'll see you next time!

Hey Folks! @Ryagi here to bring you a juicy mod (mod update?) spotlight. With EU4's latest free update and DLC recently dropping, 1.37[forum.paradoxplaza.com] + Winds of Change[forum.paradoxplaza.com], modders big and small have been hard at work to ensure your favorite mods can be enjoyed, and in many cases improved!

One of EU4's most Popular mods, Europa Expanded, has joined in on this post 1.37 update party and will be releasing a much awaited major update soon themselves. Today we invited Stiopa, LordVarangian and LiaLunare on behalf of the entire EE team to showcase some of their upcoming content they have been working on. Enjoy!

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Hello yet again, Europa Universalis 4 Enthusiasts!

Since the previous Mod Spotlight, we’ve been focusing on finishing our next major update - Terra Incognita. In addition, with the release of 1.37 we’ve also released a few other features, such as game rules and achievements!

In addition, we presume that the release date for 1.13 is going to be on June 16th, so get ready for a release in mid-to-late June.

Before we continue with this mod spotlight, it is worth checking previous development diaries we had for this update, here’s a few of them, showcasing some of the more major nations:

• Burgundy/Lotharingia
  
• England/Great Britain
  
• Netherlands
  
• Portugal
  
• Spain
  
• Papal State
  
• Francia/Aachen

With the new 1.37 free update providing a plethora of new modding capabilities, especially regarding UI, we’ve of course made quick use of that to add more quality of life as well as gameplay enhancements once again! Similar to the Mod Spotlight we had about our UI update, I will now be outlining the fancy new things we’ve added - and which we will add in the near future!
Game Rules
Something I really liked about Victoria 3 and Crusader Kings 3 is the Game Rules screen, where you are able to change certain things about how a campaign will behave, especially in regards to key historical events; which is why we’ve designed our own Game Rule system that will be shipped as part of our 1.13 update!

Here, you can determine things such as which Mission Trees AI will pick, whether you want to remove certain nations for the sake of performance, or whether you want to increase the chance of a Dutch nation spawning, or perhaps the chance for a Iberian Union of Castile and Portugal to occur!
Custom Macrobuilder
Next up, is something I’m personally really happy about: the Custom Macrobuilder
Since we started adding more QoL features, it has sometimes started getting a bit hard coming up with a good place to put them when there wasn’t an obvious place, like with the Advisors Court. For those cases, we now have our own Macrobuilder, accessible with Shift+B! In the current Steam version it only includes an Upgrade-All-Buildings tool, but in the future it’ll contain much more!

Apart from these key additions, we also have made some miscellaneous changes, such as changing all our previous UI work to use the more performance-friendly window system introduced with 1.37 (although this isn’t visible to players), and also reworked other features like the Caliphate to no longer use workarounds, but have fully custom Bubbles and Windows!
And, last but not least regarding UI, we have our achievement system! To elaborate a little, we’re using a reworked triggered modifiers screen to display the achievements, in order to have them in a list, while we recreated the triggered modifiers screen using scripted UI, which then has page buttons!
This was done both to have a smooth experience with achievements, but also to reduce the lag some of our triggered modifiers were previously causing! The result is that the player has both a vanilla-equal achievement screen, as well as an improved triggered modifiers screen!

And finally, the best part - you get Steam Achievement popups! And while they may not be actual Steam achievements, just faux popups, they still do feel pretty dang good to look at!

Of course, even that isn’t nearly everything we’re up to regarding UI, but a lot of the things we’ve started work on (such as further custom macrobuilder tabs, colonization changes, siege changes, and fully new gameplay related UIs) are so early in progress that there isn’t much to show off yet (1.37 is new after all), so keep in touch with everything new through our teasers! But for now, just have this! Can you guess what it is for? ;)

When 1.13 was first announced to the public, our first showcases were the Iberian trees. However at the time we did not have Aragon ready, and we only had a few research notes on them. Since then though we’ve fully implemented not only an Aragon tree, but tons of setup changes to their ruler, army, as well as diplomatic situation to make their experience more unique.

First things first, you will notice that Sardinia and Sicily are now on the map! Whilst both were de-jure part of Aragon at the time, however, considering their position between the kingdoms of Naples and Aragon, plus the fact that we like seeing more nations on the map, they are now junior partners of Aragon.

Another change that you may notice is that the army of Aragon looks a little different. They now start with 3 artillery regiments, the reason being was that Aragon thanks to their ruler, Alfonso V de Trastamara, were able to amass the most impressive artillery force of the time, which was used against King Rene of Naples in 1441. However you should be careful with these units, as you’ll not be able to recruit additional artillery regiments until military tech 7.

In order to represent a few other vassals and allies of Aragon, there are now new events for the subjugation of Stephan of Herzegovina, as well as Skanderbeg joining your court should Albania be wiped out from the map. This will make Aragon’s starting position quite opportunistic but also hard to maintain.

Lastly, Aragon starts with a new disaster, the War of the Remences, which some of you may know from the vanilla tree, however we’ll get on that later 👀

Whilst this tree is not as big as Castile, it will get expanded later when you form Spain, allowing you to gain the Castilian colonial missions. Now, besides that? What differentiates Aragon from Castile? Considering their position in the Mediterranean, their several conflicts with the Italian merchants, as well as their conflicts with both the Mamluks and the Ottomans, they would be even more mercantile and naval focused than their Castilian counterparts, with most of their missions revolving around securing trade in the Mediterranean. Some territories as well were a part of Aragon, like Athens, Corsica, and even parts of Provence, so we’ve tried to be as accurate to these ambitions as possible. In addition, like other nations wishing to control Egypt and potentially the trade in Asia, Aragon can also construct an early Suez Canal, although it will be costly to do so.

Whilst some are focused on the Mediterranean, there are also missions for the situation in Iberia, as well as some interaction with your vassals, such as Navarra and Castile, who you will be able to get through existing vanilla content, although Iberian Wedding has been reworked in 1.13 to require the Castilian Civil War.

Before we get onto the branching missions though, let’s speak about Aragonese flavour. Considering the Catalan dominance not only in Eastern Iberia, but also the entire Mediterranean, we’ve decided to focus more on that part of their content. There were a few underutilised effects as well as designs we wanted to try out, and Aragon fit in perfectly for them, such as further customization for your flagship, with modifications that offer drawbacks in exchange for a more specialised fleet, allowing you to pick your loan sizes, as well as encouraging the player to maintain trade power in both Genoa and Venice nodes. Some parts of the tree focuses on Alfonso V’s being a patron of the arts, which we may or may not expand later.

Now, let’s look at the spiciest part of the tree.I said before that the War of the Remences is a new disaster for Aragon. The reason being is because we wanted to look more in-depth to the opportunities this conflict caused, as well as showcase the difference between the Catalan nobility and the peasantry

So, what does this disaster have to offer?

Let’s start with the basics. Like War of the Roses or the Castilian Civil War, this disaster can only fire in the age of discovery, and like both of these, you can completely avoid them should you plan your steps correctly, although you lose out on future buffs by doing so

In order to completely avoid the disaster in the Age of Discovery though, Aragon starts with a new privilege that they must get rid of. That privilege being the “Ius Maletractandi”, better known as the Evil Customs of Aragon which allowed the Nobility to mistreat their peasantry, leading up to the War of the Remences.

Now, when the Disaster fires, if you want to prevent the worst outcome, you must get rid of the privilege. The reason being is that Catalonia will slowly start gathering supporters to create their own independent nation, autonomous from the laws of Aragon enforced to them. What’s worse is, Good King Renes of Provence still remembers his defeats in Italy and would most likely try to convince the Catalan people to declare him their king. The French as well would be able to intervene on the side of Catalonia, although Aragon can grant them the fort of Rousellon for support.

When you’re finally done with the disaster you will unlock the branching missions. Depending on how you complete or how you avoid the disaster, the missions will branch to either dealing with the numerous kingdoms in Iberia, or creating a peasant republic that will liberate every peasant in Iberia!

The recent few weeks, our development diaries have been focused on showcasing the new mission tree English/British mission tree. Alongside that, we have been developing a new mission tree for those who wish to play as the Angevin Empire. The entry point to this mission tree is the event “Second Treaty of Tours” fired by the mission “The Culmination”:

Here’s the mission tree that gets unlocked:

Now, the mission tree for Angevins is a heavy Work in Progress, so I’ll focus on the general gist of it!
The core new feature of our new Angevin content is the process of integrating the french estates and eventually forming the Angevin Empire. While a lot of the missions seem available to you from the get-go, plenty of them are guarded by a check for having enough of “Francien Integration.”

Francien Integration is a new government mechanic coming with the 1.13 update for the Angevin Empire.
It is essentially a bar measured from 0 to 1000, slowly ticking up. As the bar fills up, more of your missions unlock and the color of the two nations is brought closer:

Here’s the colors of England & France two-thirds into the integration process.

Once the bar fully fills up, the decision to form Angevin Empire is unlocked.

To allow a lot more gameplay possibilities with the new government mechanic, we have also (re)created an estate representing your french subjects, the aptly named “Francien.”
The estate currently has 11 privileges, giving you plenty of choice to work with, here’s 3 of them:

To briefly tackle the question of the mission tree, the mission tree is split into 3 subtrees, the latter two being of rather familiar scheme, representing the outward and inward ambitions of the two states, while the first one is dedicated entirely towards the unification of the two states.

As the mission tree is a heavy Work-in-Progress, I won’t go into detail, but here’s some interesting rewards contained within the mission tree:

And to make it easier to manage your realm across islands and continents alike, we’ve made it possible to create a brand new artificial strait crossing - The Channel Tunnel! With it first being proposed in 1802 and attempted in 1880, only failing due to political reasons and not practical ones, we’ve determined it to be no less fitting for the era than the Suez Canal!

Since it is a tunnel, it obviously cannot be blockaded, but for that, we came up with a rather elegant solution to allow you to still keep the island safe from crossings, if the need arises:

This also means that the artificial strait has 3 possible states:
- invisible/nonexistent, from the start of of the game until it is first built
- active, after it has first been built, and anytime it’s built after that
- inactive, whenever it is demolished after it was first built

The latter two look like this - green lines being the active one, red circles the inactive:

Additionally, The Channel Tunnel has a counterpart monument in Calais, which always matches the development of the main unit in Kent - so it’s just for show and for applying the modifiers.


We're excited to give you these changes and more when 1.13 drops in June! Until then, Europa Expanded is working and fully compatible with patch 1.37 and the Winds of Change DLC and can be found here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2164202838

We also invite anyone interested to join us over on our Europa Expanded Discord Server[discord.gg].
We wish you all a nice weekend!

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Ryagi back again.
A great variety of EUIV mods have taken the opportunity with 1.37 and cooked up some amazing stuff, to showcase this, we'll be hosting a large selection of mod spotlights in the coming 1-2 months, and then hopefully go back to a more regularly scheduled sprinkling of them after that. That is to say, we're not done giving these amazing mods their well deserved platform yet! (Hopefully never?)

If you are a mod Author and are interested in hosting a mod spotlight with us, I invite you to get in touch with us here on the forums, on Discord[discord.gg], or anywhere else you can grab our attention. We're always on the lookout for those diamonds in the rough.

As for good old vanilla EUIV, we'll continue to keep track of all your feedback with 1.37 & Winds of Change. With future patches planned to address balance issues, bugs, etc. Whether you play EUIV modless just as John EUIV conceived it, or loaded to the brim with mods, we can't thank you enough for your continued passion and support! See you next time.