Hello Everyone and Welcome to a Happy Wednesday, the day where we talk about what is happening to Europa Universalis V. As we mentioned in a Tinto Talks last year, the EU5 team is at any given time working in one of 3 different tracks. We have people working on new DLC, we have people fixing bugs and problems that need to be fixed immediately, and we have a group of people working on a bit more long-term issues with the game, similar to the Custodian team on Stellaris, providing bigger fixes and updates to the patches. Of course, if a developer has been busy making stuff for a new update as part of custodians, they are then supporting that with bugfixes until all is clean and fine, it's not handing off to someone else. While @SaintDaveUK[forum.paradoxplaza.com] has been handling Fate of the Phoenix, our studio manager and game director has been handling the development of the accompanying patch.

So, what has been the focus then for this patch? Well, from me it's been economy, military and diplomacy, while also improving the UI to bring content more visible, as you saw some of last week. We have also been working hard on improving immersion, both in AI behaviour, and in how the world is set up. Let's talk then today, about all the economy related changes that are coming to 1.2.

Urban rights are legal privileges you can grant to individual towns, cities, and megalopolises within your realm. Each right shapes that location's role in your economy: ‘Royal Textile Rights’ might boost cloth and dye output at the cost of general production efficiency, while a ‘Staple Port’ grants trade monopoly status and boosts maritime presence. Many starting rights in 1337 are tied to your country's culture or region: German territories can access the Magdeburg or Nuremberg Rights that encourage migration and merchant growth, Iberian rulers have access to the various Fueros, and Scandinavian rulers can grant Bergslag or Fishing Privileges to their ports and mines.

Slightly worse at producing things in the town, but you can have far more cloth and trade more.

Granting an urban right costs 5 government power (legitimacy, republican tradition, etc), but revoking one is far more painful, as it costs 10 stability and will deeply anger the burghers who lived under those privileges. Most rights are also lost when a location is conquered, so enemy rulers cannot simply inherit your carefully built legal framework. Some rights are mutually exclusive with others in the same location, so you'll need to choose which economic identity suits each city best. Managing your urban rights is a core part of shaping your realm's economic specialization and regional identity over time. A Town can have 1 urban right, while a city can get 2 urban rights, and capitals have 1 more available.

During the Age of Discovery, you also get access to many new urban rights that allow you to diversify your economy significantly.

These are some of the selections available in a later part of the game..

Trade Orders let you tell the AI exactly which goods to import or export from a market, without micromanaging individual trade routes.
When you set an Import Order, you allocate some of your Merchant Capacity to automatically bring that good into your market, the AI finds the cheapest available source each day. An Export Order works the same way, directing the AI to push your surplus goods out to the most profitable destination it can find.

Orders are fulfilled first before any remaining Merchant Capacity is used for general automated trading, so they act as standing priorities. You can set multiple orders across different goods, and if there isn't enough Merchant Capacity to cover all of them, orders higher in the list get served first. You can always change around the priority of your trade orders.

Each order shows you which trade route the AI has currently assigned to it, along with the profit it's making. If the AI can't find a profitable route on a given day, the order will keep trying, it won't simply disappear. You can cancel any order at any time, which returns its Merchant Capacity back to the general automation pool.

The UI will list the 5 biggest import needs not with orders and 5 biggest export possibilities, so you can quickly set up your own…

Megalopolis is a new pinnacle city rank sitting above City, reserved for the true giants of the Medieval and Early Modern world. Only your capital can reach this status, and only if it has already grown to at least 400,000 inhabitants and functions as a market center, requirements that make it a late-game achievement rather than a routine upgrade.
The five-year construction project demands four times the glass, masonry, and lumber of a standard city upgrade, but the payoff is substantial: doubled population capacity, doubled free building levels, a second concurrent construction slot, and dramatically higher pop attractiveness across all strata.

Megalopolises do carry real drawbacks, integrating newly conquered territory into their area is significantly slower, and the sheer weight of the city makes it harder for armies to move through, reflecting the logistical reality of managing an enormous urban center. At the start, only Constantinople, Cairo, and Beijing start at this rank, giving you a sense of just how rare and historically significant these cities were.

Due to the high cost and high requirements, only a small handful of cities will ever be able to become Megalopolises throughout the game, keeping it reserved for only the most special locations in the world.

Thats a big city eh?

Court upkeep used to be a simple fixed percentage of your Economic Base, and modifiers changed that with a straight + or - percentage, which made each thing impacting it insanely harsh or beneficial.
Now it anchors at a firm 10% of your Economic Base, and a whole ecosystem of modifiers, advances, government reforms, laws, and inflation, push that percentage up or down rather than replacing it outright. This makes the base cost predictable and readable: you always know the starting point, and you can see exactly what each modifier is doing to it.

Inflation is one of the more punishing contributors, scaling court costs upward alongside diplomatic spending and fort maintenance, so letting prices spiral has compounding effects on your administration. The 10% floor cannot be reduced to zero, ensuring your court always demands a slice of your economy, regardless of how efficiently you govern.

Now we know why they had the revolution..

Colonizing nations can now erect a Colonial Administration in their overseas territories, converting distant possessions into genuine trade assets. Back home, a new line of urban buildings traces the arc of early modernity, from Renaissance learning through the Age of Discovery to Absolutist governance, steadily concentrating control and crown power in your hands.
And for the first time, war carries a sharper economic bite: select buildings can now be torched, letting occupying armies or rebellious populations leave lasting scars on the land.

Useful? Hell yes..

Expanding an RGO now costs more if the good it produces is highly valuable, a grain field is cheap to grow, while a spice plantation demands serious investment. The cost scales with the good's default market price, meaning high-value luxuries like silk or ivory will require significantly more ducats to expand than basic staples. This makes early-game RGO expansion more accessible for common agricultural goods, while creating a meaningful economic decision around whether the revenue from a lucrative RGO justifies the steeper up-front cost.
The expansion cost breakdown tooltip now shows exactly how much the good's market price is contributing to the cost, so you can see at a glance why one RGO is more expensive to scale than another.

Yes, I still want to expand it..

Starting a new game, major cities in the world now have a production profile reflecting what made them historically famous in the 14th century. Venice dominates glass and naval production, Florence is the cloth and dyeing capital of Europe, Damascus produces unrivalled weapons and fine silk, and Samarkand anchors the Silk Road with its paper and luxury textiles, to name just a few. Rather than every Italian or German city being identical, major trade hubs like Bruges, Lübeck, Córdoba, and Novgorod each have distinct economic identities that create real regional specialization from the start. These differences mean that controlling, trading with, or conquering these cities carries tangible economic meaning tied to their real historical role.
Regional cities across the world now better reflect their documented 14th-century economic identities. England's towns produce more cloth and leather, Iberian cities are renowned for fine merino wool and Córdoba leather, and the Lowlands double down on the dyes that made Flemish cloth the luxury fabric of Northern Europe. The Levant is now a center of bladesmithing and silk weaving rather than a generic trade hub, while Korean cities finally produce the celadon porcelain that Chinese contemporaries considered the finest in the world. India's glass production has been corrected from an absurd level to a historically accurate low. India imported glass, not exported it. Distilled spirits have been quietly removed from Russian, Polish, Balkan, and Baltic towns where vodka and rakia simply didn't exist yet in the 1330s.

When you load into your starting bookmark, estates across your realm will now already have a meaningful number of estate buildings constructed, nobles will have their manors, clergy their monasteries, and burghers their trade posts. The amount built is proportional to each estate's balance, so wealthy estates in prosperous countries will show the most development. On top of that, most rural locations throughout the world now spawn with a village at start, giving a much more lived-in feel to the map from day one. Together, these changes mean less micro-management in the opening years and a more historically grounded starting economy.

Precious goods are now less dominant. Gold dropped from 10 to 8 ducats, silver from 8 to 6, and elephants from 10 to 5, these were simply too powerful as economic anchors, crowding out other trade goods.
Glass now has a more meaningful role. Its base price rose from 2 to 3, and nobles, burghers, and clergy now actively demand it, making glassmaking a more viable industry rather than a niche luxury curiosity.

Books became cheaper. The base price fell from 5 to 3, better reflecting that book production is a mid-tier manufactured good rather than a premium export.
Raw materials are cheaper to move. Transport costs for iron, copper, tin, lead, and lumber were halved (from 2 to 1), and stone dropped from 5 to 2, meaning inland producers of these bulk goods are less penalized by distance to market.

Unemployed peasants now contribute to raw material markets. Stone, clay, sand, and lumber each receive 0.01 base production per unemployed peasant, giving underdeveloped regions a small economic floor even without dedicated production buildings.

The demand for key trade goods now shifts meaningfully as history progresses. In the early game, spirits, tobacco, coffee, and tea are barely known outside their regions of origin, your distilleries and plantations will find limited markets, and prices reflect that scarcity. As the Ages turn, the world wakes up to these goods: coffee houses spread from Istanbul to Amsterdam, tobacco becomes a colonial obsession, sugar transitions from an exotic spice to a near-staple, and tea goes from a Chinese curiosity to the backbone of British colonial trade. By the Age of Revolutions, demand for all five goods has roughly doubled or tripled from their medieval baseline, making late-game plantation colonies and trade routes far more profitable than they would have been in the 14th century. The age tooltip now shows these demand shifts in their own dedicated section, so you can plan your economy around what the world will want next.

The location view now has a dedicated Goods tab, together with the infrastructure, military and demographics tab, giving you a production analytics view for that specific province at a glance. For each good produced at the location, you can see which buildings are generating it, their combined production efficiency (factoring in both country-wide and local modifier), and the total output volume that flows into the market.

Production efficiency is surfaced as the key metric, expressed as a percentage, so you can immediately spot where investment or policy changes would have the most impact. Market prices are shown alongside a trend indicator, letting you judge at a glance whether a good is currently undersupplied or oversupplied in the market the location belongs to. The tab also breaks output down into the wealth and income it generates, giving you the economic story behind each commodity rather than just raw production numbers. Buildings are displayed as small icon cards directly on each goods row, and if more than two buildings contribute, you get an expandable count, so tracing exactly where production comes from is a single hover away.

Every column is sortable, so you can rank goods by efficiency, output, price, wealth, or income, depending on what question you're trying to answer. All values are backed by full breakdown tooltips, meaning the Goods tab doubles as a diagnostic tool when you're trying to understand why a province is underperforming economically.

Fine Cloth rules the world.. And the fish is not all that bad in Venice. However, we got lots of potential in the glass here..

One of the most fundamental changes in this update is how populations grow and evolve in Europa Universalis V. Previously, all population growth was entirely on peasants, and getting other pop types was driven entirely by promotion, pops moving up the social ladder from one type to another. We've now given each pop type its own organic growth rate, meaning peasants, burghers, nobles, clergy, and tribespeople all reproduce and expand naturally over time, independent of promotion. Slaves are the exception, they remain a coerced population whose numbers are determined entirely by the slave trade and forced migration, not by natural increase. There are different reforms, and other things that impact the growth of specific types of pops.

Yes, clergy will grow as well for catholics...

Because pops now grow organically, promotion has been dramatically scaled back, the rate at which pops change type is now one-tenth of what it was before. This means the composition of your population will feel much more stable and historically grounded; you won't see your peasantry rapidly converting into burghers simply because you built a market. Speaking of burghers, we've rebalanced their relationship with urban buildings: burgher-dependent structures now require roughly half as many burghers to staff, but in exchange, those burghers now wield double the political power and contribute a larger share of tax revenue. This makes a smaller, well-established merchant class genuinely impactful rather than requiring you to pack every city with tens of thousands of tradespeople before buildings become meaningful.
We've also connected labor markets more directly to social mobility. When a region has a Surplus of Work, more jobs available than workers to fill them, enfranchisement can now increase by up to 20%, reflecting the historical reality that labor scarcity gives common people leverage to demand rights and freedoms.

Finally, food consumption modifiers are now correctly wired into the food storage system: effects that alter how much food your population consumes will properly influence the food storage bonus to pop growth, meaning efficient agricultural policy and trade in foodstuffs will have a real, visible payoff in population expansion over the decades.

The trade system has received its most comprehensive rework yet, touching everything from how routes are costed to how capacity is consumed and how automation behaves. The biggest architectural shift was replacing the old hard/soft range cap with a continuous cost curve: routes no longer get hard-blocked at a certain distance, but instead accrue a scaling path-cost penalty the further they stretch, giving players a meaningful economic tradeoff rather than an arbitrary wall. Alongside that, we've wired Maritime Presence directly into path cost calculations, a strong naval presence along a route now reduces its transport cost, making sea-power feel genuinely useful for trade rather than just a defensive stat.

We definitely need better trade range.. OR maritime presence in the Red Sea, Hormuz, etc..

To complete the maritime loop, navies now contribute Maritime Presence upward to their overlord, so colonial powers and subject-holding empires benefit from the sea control their subjects maintain. This makes building a distributed naval empire feel rewarding in a way that the older system didn't support. We also halved the distance penalty for sea routes specifically, reflecting the historical reality that pre-modern bulk goods moved far more cheaply by ship than by land.

Venetian Fleet helps its subjects be able to collect taxes! Win-Win!

Trade capacity costs were reduced globally, which gives players more room to operate a diversified trade network without immediately hitting the ceiling, a change that should make the mid-game feel less punishing while the player is still building their burgher infrastructure. The Sound Toll's income was reined in to bring it in line with other strategic chokepoints, since it had become an outsized source of revenue that distorted game balance around controlling that single location.

On the production side, the produced_in_market modifier has been removed from production efficiency entirely. It was a hidden penalty that made local production less attractive in markets with active trade, working against the intuitive expectation that a well-connected market should be a good place to produce goods, and its removal simplifies an already complex calculation.

Several longstanding bugs were addressed. The trade detail panel was showing stale cached values rather than live data, which made it hard to trust the numbers you were reading. Trade automation had reliability problems where orders were being incorrectly cancelled or not created at all, undermining the whole point of the automation system. The precious metal export ban was also accidentally blocking legitimate domestic inter-market transfers, a critical fix since gold and silver movements underpin the entire monetary economy.

The local goods demand tooltip now surfaces a breakdown of how many pops of each type are wealthy enough to demand a good, giving players much better visibility into why a market is or isn't consuming a particular commodity. This kind of granular feedback is especially valuable when tuning town setups or deciding where to build production.

Yeah, not even the byzantine nobles are rich enough to afford fine cloth. Time to reduce their taxes or the prices of goods they want?
The old Trade Efficiency modifier has been retired and replaced by three direction-specific modifiers that more accurately model what actually happens in a trade transaction. Selling Efficiencyis the direct successor, it multiplies the sell price for all trades regardless of direction, and is what most generic Burgher bonuses, trade-focused laws, and commercial culture advances now grant.
Export Efficiency specifically reduces the buying cost on export trades (goods leaving your market to a foreign one), making it the natural home for bonuses tied to outward commercial reach, things like trade company privileges, certain naval laws, and advances for historically export-oriented cultures.

Import Efficiency instead reduces the buying cost on cross-market imports, and is used for penalties and bonuses that reflect how well a country absorbs foreign goods, tariff-like auto-modifiers, being an isolated economy, or conversely having a strong mercantile infrastructure that lowers procurement costs. The roughly two hundred script sources that previously used trade_efficiency were each audited and reassigned to whichever of the three modifiers best matched their thematic intent, rather than being mechanically split evenly, so the distinction carries real design meaning rather than being a cosmetic rename.

The market summary panel now shows a dedicated Burgher Trade Capacity figure with a full breakdown tooltip, so you can see exactly how many trades your burghers in that market are generating and what is contributing to that number. The tooltip correctly scopes to the player country when viewing a foreign market, giving you your own burghers' contribution rather than the market aggregate.

The local tradesper burgher bonus on the Marketplace building chain has been dramatically increased, the base Marketplace goes from 0.2 to 1, Merchants Quarters from 0.3 to 1.5, Grand Marketplace from 0.4 to 2, and Commerce Center from 0.8 to 4, making investment in trade buildings feel meaningfully impactful rather than marginal. The Port Authority also received a smaller bump, from 0.1 to 0.25. The Ledger's markets tab now includes a burghers trading column so you can compare your burgher trade output across all your markets at a glance.

Of course they want fine cloth…

Some of the changes we have made to the economic AI include that the AI trade and economy system has received a number of improvements to make it behave more sensibly over time. Markets should no longer swing wildly between glut and scarcity, as price trends and surplus signals now work together to keep supply stable. AI rulers now weigh their people's welfare when making trade decisions rather than chasing raw profit, and will actively seek out goods their craftsmen need as building inputs. Colonial powers should better recognise the export value of plantation goods, and slave workforce shortages are now treated as a welfare signal that prompts importing labour.
We have also fixed a significant amount of bugs related to the economy system in the game, including three rather important changes that could be described as bugs, exploits or design flaws.
First of all, temporary demands added by events or other effects are consumed last after everything else, instead of first, so this does not cripple economies, but instead drives up prices as intended.

Secondly, while bankruptcy destroyed armies, deleted buildings and did other bad things to your country, it never touched any construction queue you had. Now though, when you go bankrupt, your construction queues are erased.

Finally, only the constructions at the top of a queue that could progress will add their demands to the market.

Stay tuned, next week we will be back with some discussions on improvements to the military system, logistics, and some new concepts we are bringing in for 1.2 and Fate of the Phoenix…

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. For today we will be looking into some of the miscellaneous content in the Fate of the Phoenix immersion pack.

Some of the earlier events are focused around John Kantakouzenos, the nobleman who served under the incumbent Andronikos III, and eventually became emperor himself. He starts as the Head of the Cabinet, reflecting his position as Megas Domestikos. In real life, he lived to a venerable age of 91, and so his life expectancy is given a significant boost in the setup.

In real life, he rejected Co-Emperorship, at least to begin with. But if you force him down that path, it opens up an event chain of courtly intrigue of Ana de Savoie.

His position as Head of the Cabinet will now also put him in a prime position to take over the Regency, as he historically did upon the death of Andronikos III.

We are also introducing a new Subject Type called the Prónoiai, based on the real Byzantine Prónoiai system, conditional land grants from the Emperor to military officers and officials, which evolved from temporary tax-collection appointments into hereditary holdings combining fiscal and military duties. It is more extractive than a vassal, giving gold, sailors, and manpower to the overlord, and increases the owner’s monthly legitimacy but also pushes towards decentralization.

What have the Romans ever done for us? Well, some cities will start with an aqueduct system.

Philipp Melanchton was a close ally of Martin Luther, and he was fascinated by the Eastern church. When the reformation happens, the country housing Philipp Melanchthon will be able to petition Byzantium for assistance. They can respond, either choosing to look upon Lutheranism favourably or aloofly ignoring them.

In the past, the Byzantines deployed a napalm-like substance whose recipe was a closely guarded secret. So closely guarded in fact that by 1337 the recipe was lost to time. However the Byzantines had a cultural memory and fascination with Greek Fire, so if you have a scientist in Byzantium, you can sponsor them to rediscover Greek Fire, a costly and dangerous process that has a high chance of ending in failure.

If the scientist succeeds, the secret of Greek Fire will give you access to Siphōnes fire galleys, which will aid you in defending the Bosphorus.

Based on community feedback, we’ve been revisiting how we frame the Latinitas vs Hellenismos societal value. Our original design did not fully capture the nature of the choices facing the Byzantine Empire in the 14th and 15th centuries.

Latinitas is now more clearly associated with engagement with the contemporary Latin West. It represents the political influence of the internal factions who believe that the Empire’s survival depends on closer ties with the Latins through diplomacy, religious compromise, and the selective adoption of Western currents and Renaissance thought. Shaped by contact with Frankish kingdoms and Italian republics, Latinitas looks for foreign support and renewal in a time of mounting pressure. As the Empire expands into historically Romance regions, particularly in Italy, this outlook may strengthen further, encouraging accommodation and integration with Latin elites and populations.

The illustration will also change to be less Imperator’s SPQR and instead reflect Renaissance Italy’s depictions of their nostalgia for Pax Romana.

Meanwhile, Hellenismos has been reworked into Romanismos. It reflects the political power of those who understand that the Empire endures through its unbroken Roman inheritance: rooted in Constantinople as the seat of empire, upheld by the Orthodox Church, and sustained by long-established imperial institutions. Romanismos does not represent a novel Greekish direction, but the continuation of what already exists: the Roman Empire as it has always been, requiring preservation rather than transformation.

You will get several events as you navigate this political dichotomy that represent the real push-and-pull that was happening inside the Byzantine court.

And on the topic of events, we have also been working on a much-requested quality of life tool for players to see the list of unique events that a country has access to. Players will be able to use a searchable, filterable, tooltippable database of Dynamic Historical Events, so they can plan out which path they want to go down and see why some events fire and some events don’t. Bear in mind this is very WIP.

This Tinto Talks has just a hint of the kind of content you can find in Fate of the Phoenix, but there is a lot more to discover as you play.

In the patch 1.2 Echinades we have also added a lot of free content to countries in the Byzantine sphere. There 5 new works of art in the Balkans, over 300 new advances spread around Greek Minors, Frankokratia, and the Balkans, more than a hundred new events, new government reforms, privileges, etc. The whole region will now be a much more exciting place to rule in.

Next week we will take a look at what the custodian team has been doing in the 1.2 Echinades patch in regards to the economy. See you then!

This past week we’ve been sourcing various forms of community feedback. Including our recently launched feedback survey and newly opened closed beta applications

📊 Community Survey First, if you haven't already, we'd love for you to fill out our community survey. It takes just a few minutes and directly informs how we prioritize development going forward. Every response matters.

A link to the survey can be found here → https://pdxint.at/4dHhLk1

🔒 Closed Beta Applications Second, we're opening applications for the EU5 Closed Beta program. This is a small, invite-only group of dedicated testers who work directly alongside the Tinto development team.

The closed beta program is a more involved commitment than the public open beta. Selected participants are expected to provide structured, active feedback.

Those who are accepted require a signed NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement), and all applicants must be 18 years or older.

If that sounds like the right fit for you, applications are open now and close April 6th.

A link to apply can be found here → https://pdxint.at/4dMyO4g

Whether you fill out the survey, apply for the beta, or both, we want to thank you for being part of making Europa Universalis V a grander grand strategy game!

— The Tinto Team

Hello, and welcome back to another Tinto Talks, where we are currently looking at the additional features for the 1.2 ‘Echinades’ patch, and the Fate of the Phoenix immersion pack that will release alongside it.

As mentioned last week, the primary pillars of Fate of the Phoenix are the day-to-day running of the state and the mid-term goals of reconquering the near empire. These pillars tie heavily into the interactions we have incorporated into religion for the DLC.

Orthodoxy is of course the central religion in Fate of the Phoenix, being tied so inextricably to the Roman state. The basic system of Orthodoxy still operates within the confines of the Patriarchates, both Ecumenical and Autocephalous.

Patriarchs are now characters in their own right, who appear at the head of the patriarchates instead of the ruler.

Some Patriarchal Laws are so sacred that they cannot ever be changed; their permanence is now shown visually in the GUI.

We have also added several more Holy Sites for the religion, including monasteries like Mount Athos and the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, as well as Svetitskhoveli Cathedral.

Greek Orthodox countries now use the Koiné dialect (pronounced like KEE-nee) as their Liturgical Language instead of common Greek.

All Eastern Christian religions no longer use Rite Power, instead they have changed to the generic Religious Influence system.

As the proud owner of a Patriarchal seat, you can spend some Religious Influence, and of course cash, to have your children to be educated by the Patriarch himself, which is the finest education in the game in terms of ability development. It also converts them to Orthodoxy on the off-chance they were a bit too wayward.

If you don’t happen to own an Autocephalous Patriarchate, you can invite a delegation from the Patriarchate that you belong to at the cost of influence, which improves mutual opinion with the Patriarch’s country and allows you to select a bonus of your choice.

Owners of Icon works of art can lend them to other Orthodox countries to earn a bit of cold, hard cash relative to the quality of the work of art. It warms relations between both countries, and the recipient country gets to benefit from the Icon for 10 years.

With Fate of the Phoenix, we introduce a new feature called the Pentarchy. It represents the 5 most important patriarchates in the world, 5 permanent pillars that anchor Christianity, and were formalised into the Pentarchy by Justinian I. The ancient apostolic sees of Constantinople, Rome, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria need no introduction: they have their roots in the ancient world and still exist today.

Uniting the Pentarchy should be a main long term goal of any Orthodox empire. Holding each member of the pentarchy grants you a unique bonus, and uniting all of the pentarchy under your control will increase all of their bonuses.

Uniting the Pentarchy will also give you the option of finally mending the Western schism with Catholicism… at least in theory. Unilaterally declaring the Western Schism over will bring you a significant boost to your heretic conversion speed. Some Catholic pops in the West will convert to Orthodoxy, and some friendly Catholic countries might flip too.

Once you do that, you can also choose to restore the primacy of Rome, which will relocate your Autocephalous Patriarchate to St Peter’s Basilica in Rome itself, a very prestigious move. Doing so will severely damage the authority of the exiled Catholic Pope, degrading the Catholic Church’s Papal Authority law to Invisible Church, meaning they no longer receive tithes.

Owners of the DLC will also see lots of art, like immersive event illustrations and 3D character portraits for patriarchs and regular clergymen.

Miasiphysitism has also benefited from some additional rework by virtue of sharing a lot of systems with Orthodoxy, but we have also added some additional features to separate them a little, such as Religious Aspects.

Since an easter egg resurgence of Hellenism was in the base game, we felt it was worthwhile expanding on it just a little.

Gemistos Plethon was a real figure from 15th century Byzantium who wrote about Platonism, a philosophical system harking back to Plato’s Ancient Greece that could be considered somewhat syncretic between Christianity and Hellenistic paganism.

He preached that the Hellenistic understanding of God was compatible with the Christian understanding, and that the ancient Greek pantheon should form the basis of the Byzantine state religion. Although he frequently danced close to being branded as a heretic, he retained good connections in the Byzantine court.

As such, Hellenism at its outset will feel more like a heresy of Christianity than true paganism. This is reflected in the Monism religious aspect that they will begin with, the belief that The One is God, and all Gods are the One, which somewhat reduced the impact of the individual Gods while giving you stability.

If you hold all the Holy Sites for Hellenistic religion, you can also declare a return to the old ways without having to wait for Plethon to appear. This kind of player-driven heresy is something we want to look at for other religions like Anglicanism eventually.

The gameplay loop of Hellenism is a little unique. Historically, praying to individual gods was considered a ruler’s civic duty. Roughly every 10 to 20 years, players will be able to perform a ritual to one of 6 gods.

Each god has 10 unique Omens up their sleeve, and upon paying your Religious Influence they will give you a small random selection to choose from. Once you select that omen, it stays active for 10 years.

Omens are expensive but very powerful modifiers, and as the ritual is so closely tied to the ruler, the power of each Omen will increase depending on your Ruler’s ADM, DIP, or MIL ability, depending on the category of the God..

They get a small selection of different religious aspects that for example allow the canonization of God Emperors or improving the power of Omens.

Here's a sneak peek of one of the several QOL features that we have been working on. While playing with the religious features of Fate of the Phoenix I found it pretty handy to assign all my religious mapmodes to a single slot so I could cycle through them all easily.

Next week is Easter, so a lot of the team will be off. But not me. I’ll be bringing you another Tinto Talks that takes a deeper look at the general flavour for Byzantium that is spread throughout the game.

Hello, and welcome to our 100th Tinto Talks!

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to give you a rundown on many of the things planned for the 1.2 patch, and also details on the shiny new Fate of the Phoenix Immersion Pack that will release alongside it!

1.2 ‘Echinades’ focuses on a plethora of different quality of life issues, ranging from exposing hidden content to improving mapmodes, some balance changes, as well as some free content to the Balkan sphere, Orthodoxy, and the Holy Roman Empire. There are also lots of new free features related to economy, politics and diplomacy, and we have taken a long look at logistics as well.

I’ll be revealing more details in future Tinto Talks.

Firstly, a little about the new naming conventions we are using for EU5 DLCs, just so everyone is on the same page.

An Immersion Pack is a smaller DLC that increases the depth of a single country, or elaborates on a focused theme.
A Chronicle Pack is medium-sized and offers a little more player value, for example, focusing on 2 countries, and often along a wider narrative theme.
We also envisage an Expansion Pack as the third tier, even larger in scope, but we won’t be releasing one of those this year.


The Premium Edition of EU5 contains Fate of the Phoenix Immersion Pack and also two more unreleased DLCs: Across the Pillars and Auld Alliance, which will both be medium-sized Chronicle Packs. This means if you already own the EU5 Premium Edition, you will automatically unlock this DLC content when it releases.

Hopefully, that has explained our intentions here,but feel free to ask questions about this topic!

Fate of the Phoenix is an immersion pack, so it is one of the smaller offerings that we have planned, focusing almost exclusively on the surviving Eastern Roman Empire.

I will outline the vision of the DLC a little bit here, which is built on the following pillars.

• Strike back against the expanding Ottomans, Serbians, and other nearby vultures with the Fate of the Phoenix disaster, which brings you new options for internal politics and options for expansion.

• Experience improvements to Eastern Orthodoxy and the dynamics of the patriarchates.

• Dozens of new events to immerse you deeper into the narrative of Byzantium’s final years, or their resurgence.

• Revive the classical era, with ways to hark back to Latin culture, legions, and an expanded Hellenistic religion.

• A brand new set of illustrations and 3D models for more immersion into Greek culture and the Orthodox religion. Greek Orthodox choir music brings you right into the grand halls of Constantinople.

I’ll be revealing parts of the DLC and details of the surrounding patch over the next few weeks, and opening up the discussion a bit to hear your thoughts. But today, we are looking at some of the ways we are tying together content for managing the Byzantine state.

Representing the massive organs of administration necessary for running a large modern state, Bureaucracies are a brand new feature making an appearance.

For Byzantium, Bureaucracies represent the ancient arms of government that have been grandfathered in from a previous time. A time when large administrative apparatuses gave the empire great sway over the Mediterranean and beyond. But times change.

In 1337, the rump state of Byzantium is stuck with these outdated systems. Built for managing a vast empire, they are now a drain on the more humble position that the emperor finds himself in.

Each Bureaucracy has a negative, positive, and neutral modifier.

Over time, Bureaucracies grow more and more entrenched, increasing the power of both the good modifiers and the bad. The more entrenched they are, the more expensive they are to run, and the more stubborn they are to remove.

Funding them correctly will allow them to flourish, giving your country strong bonuses.

Funding them poorly will cause them to grow corrupt and decrepit, their negative modifiers a drain on your country.

High crown power can reduce their costs, making them less burdensome.

In Fate of the Phoenix, Byzantium starts with 4 slots already filled with unique Bureaucracies: Thémata, the Imperial Senate, Honorary Titles, and the Sixty Books of the Basiliká, and a total of 7 more that it can implement. In the late game, they can unlock two additional slots: one in the Age of Reformation and another in the Age of Revolutions.

Being vast administrations, each bureaucracy demands huge amounts of paper, books, and furniture in your capital, scaled up by their entrenchment.

Each Bureaucracy available is liked or disliked by the different Estates in your country. This increases or decreases their max estate satisfaction relative to the Entrenchment. Estates will also raise Parliament Agendas to entrench or disentrench specific bureaucracies based on their opinions.

Likewise, removing a bureaucracy will cost stability relative to the Entrenchment, and it will also anger or please estates depending on their opinions relative to the Entrenchment.

Currently, only Byzantium and Trebizond have Bureaucracy content in the DLC, but the system is available to modders, and we have a lot of ideas how to expand this feature to other countries in the near future.

In Fate of the Phoenix, Byzantium also gets a unique Societal Value: Latinitas vs Hellenismos. As Byzantines, you are indisputably Roman, but this determines whether your society leans more towards the more Italic or Greek spheres.

Byzantium begins very far towards the Hellenismos side, but through player action you can return to the old ways of the ancient Roman Empire.

Orthodoxy, your capital being Constantinople, and Greek language will drift you towards Hellenismos, while Catholicism, Rome, and Romance languages will drift you towards Latinitas.

If you find yourself on a reconquest of Italy, you might find that the Latin side of your empire gradually becomes stronger and impossible to ignore.

There are a lot of events focused on tweaking one way or the other, and they are generally quite dynamic. Their effects will sometimes scale based on the size of your country or the abilities of the characters involved. Several of them have multiple outcomes, so the same event can give you different options each time.

Even when you are 100% on one side of the Societal value, the events are designed in such a way that a push to the other side will offer enticing rewards enough to make you consider the shift.

Almost immediately, Byzantium will be plunged into a new Disaster called Fate of the Phoenix. It offers many opportunities to interact with the immediate world and Roman politics.

In 1337 Byzantium finds itself in a difficult position. The rise of various external threats in the East (remnants of Rum, the various Beyliks) have greatly diminished the Empire's control across the Bosporus. In recent years, the Byzantine army suffered great devastation and defeats at the hands of Orhan Bey, resulting in the loss of key cities across the coast of Marmara. In the north, the ambitious Stefan Uros IV plans to erect his own empire on the foundations of Rome, while the Bulgarians are keeping a keen eye on these developments. Indeed, the title of Rome has never been in such peril, fleeting from Byzantine grasp.

The disaster simulates the difficult period that Byzantium underwent during the middle point of the 14th century. Presenting a challenging run, whilst maintaining a fair balance, it offers an experience that tests your resourcefulness, quick thinking and management skills.

In order to complete the disaster successfully, you will need to conquer a substantial amount of the lost territories of the Empire. During this time, you will be able to interact with new and unique Disaster actions, units, advances, cabinet actions, CBs, events, buildings and more.

Neighboring countries will be given the opportunity to interfere and claim your lands, proving a threat to Byzantium's resurrection. Meanwhile, the Byzantine Succession Crisis will occur simultaneously, pushing the realm to stretch in order to manage a perfect balance between happy estates, loyal generals and neighbors in check.

The conquest of unique locations like Nicomedia and Smyrna will yield unique new bonuses to help you on the road towards restoration, while defeating the strongest Beylik will unlock a new interaction in the disaster.

Upon successful completion of the disaster, you will be handsomely rewarded with a unique Casus Belli to assist you in pressing the (now renewed and ever legitimate) claim on the old borders of the Roman Empire, putting you on a path destined for glory

Stay tuned next week, where I will bring you some good omens. We will dive into the expansion of Eastern Orthodoxy, and also touch on the additional flavour of the Hellenism religion.

Checksum: b0ac

Date: March 17th, 2026

Previous Patch: 1.1.9[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

====================

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Economy:

• Fixed an issue where buildings could persist at level 0 instead of being properly removed, which could cause the game to enter an infinite loop when a country goes bankrupt.

Diplomacy:

• Fixed an issue where war declarations were incorrectly labeled as independence wars, even when the war's objective had nothing to do with breaking free from an overlord.

Military:

• Fixed a commonly reported bug where military units raised from the population (levies) could remain attached to a population group (pop) even after becoming invalid, causing them to be raised indefinitely and resulting in incorrect troop counts.

• Regular (professional standing) units no longer receive an additional +100% combat bonus on top of what levies already get, bringing them more in line with their intended role.

-------

Map:

• Reworked many river connections across Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America to improve and make clearer the spread of Proximity.

------

Portraits:

• Fixed a crash that occurred when hovering over an estate (a social class such as Nobility or Clergy) that had no disenfranchisement data (the process of converting one estate into another).

• Fixed characters incorrectly darkening with age; their skin now retains roughly the same brightness but gradually loses saturation over time, as intended.

Checksum: d718

Date: March 5th, 2026

Previous Patch: 1.0.11[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Hello all! I'm Ryagi, Community Manager at Paradox Tinto

On February 3rd we released an open beta version of 1.1, Rossbach. Today we're happy to say that patch 1.1 Rossbach is officially live! Thanks to your feedback during our beta period, Rossbach features hundreds of tweaks, changes and additions.

As a reminder, this means the beta branches of patch 1.1 are no longer available.

Can I keep the same save game?

If your save is currently on beta 1.1.8, you should have no issues loading the save in the now live version (1.1.9)

If your save is from the live version 1.0.11, we highly recommend starting a new save game. Though based on our testing your save should technically load, we'd advise you do so at your own risk. The 1.0.11 branch is still available as an option if you want to wrap up your save there first.

1.1 Beta process

We made a post yesterday detailing some of our findings from the beta process during 1.1[forum.paradoxplaza.com], please feel free to check that out if you haven't already!

Here are Links to the notes related to patch 1.1 beta process:

• 1.1.0[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.1[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.2[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.3[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.4[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.5[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.6[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.7[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

• 1.1.8[forum.paradoxplaza.com]

Below are the highlights for Patch 1.1:

Gameplay Mechanics

• There is now a game rule for how aggressive you want the AI to be.

• Added a “Return Core Location” peace treaty, allowing locations occupied during the war by the player, their subjects (including subjects of subjects), or allies to be returned to the controller at the time of the peace deal.

• Added transfer subject peace treaty.

• Added a Coin Law to determine what metals you use for your coins.

• The game now has 7 different game speeds.

• Added in a Complacency Mechanic that is primarily increased by the lack of threatening rivals, and decreased when losing wars.

New Content

• Added a new disaster for Brandenburg, “Turmoil in Brandenburg”,handling the content concerning the ‘Wittelsbacher Neglect’, ‘FalseWaldemar’, and ‘Robber Barons’ event chains in a more cohesive way. Also added 6 new additional events for it.

• Added a generic Grenadier Unit for the Age of Revolutions.

• Added 7 new Units for several German Countries. Added Saxon Defensioners (Saxon Culture), Prussian Grenadiers (Prussia), Bavarian Jager (Bavaria), Hessian Jager (Rhine Franconian Culture), Grenzhussar (Austria), Pandur Infantry (Austria, Croatia), Gebirgsschutzen (Danube/South Bavarian, Swiss).

• Added 2 new Advances for the German Culture Group, giving regional Toll Castles.

• Added the following unique advances: 1 advance for Hesse, 2 for Cologne, 6 for the Palatinate, 1 for Trier, 2 for the Hanseatic countries of The Hansa, Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen and Rostock.

• Added 8 unique Gods to Tengrism.

• Added 7 new Achievements, all in the ‘Hard’ category, aiming for more seasoned players who are looking for new challenges.

Interface

• Added automation for auto balancing armies.

• Rally Points. When recruiting a Unit Template or using Raise All Levies, all created units will now spawn and merge at a designated location. For Unit Templates, units will rally at the location where the split command was initiated. For Raise All Levies, units will by default go to the capital or the nearest coastal location to the capital, unless the player specifies another rally point when raising them.

• Added Unit Templates. Now it is possible to create a unit template for navy and army and recruit it between several locations depending on their distance and current queue.

• You can now have preferences for how a unit is balanced.

• Added Location Buildings panel, allowing users to view all constructed buildings in a location; accessible via the location card, poptype location buttons, and Shift+clicking a location on the map in the Buildings Macro Builder.

• Added Music Player.

Cosmetics

• Added a new Loading Screen portraying the Prussian 7th Braunschweig Bevern Infantry on the left flank at the Battle of Rossbach.

• Added 2 new Unit Illustrations. Age of Absolutism Grenadiers (Prussia and Brandenburg) and Age of Revolutions Grenadiers (european generic).

• Added Late-Game clothing and customization options for portraits, including Tricor

• Gameplay - 380 issues solved, including:

  • New Peasant Enfranchisement system shifts income between peasants and nobles depending on laws and control.

  • Food stockpiles now increase population growth, but stored food also decays over time.

  • Transport costs rebalanced (raw materials more expensive, manufactured goods cheaper).

  • Estates keep wealth, and their wealth now affects their political power.

  • Powerful estates now lose satisfaction faster, forcing players to balance privileges.

  • New Cabinet Action to appease estates.

  • Wealth lost from lack of control now goes to estates instead of disappearing.

  • Combat dice increased from 0–5 to 0–9, making modifiers more important.

  • Combined arms bonus introduced for diverse armies.

  • Mercenaries drastically cheaper to recruit.

  • Cavalry damage reduction lowered and artillery survivability improved.

  • War exhaustion effects increased

  • Assimilation speed doubled (1 → 2).

  • Assimilation now depends on language, culture opinion, and market language.

  • Control multiplies conversion and assimilation speed.

  • Pops retain literacy when changing class or culture.

  • Annexation speed tied to diplomatic maintenance.

  • Transfer Subject peace treaty added.

  • Threat system introduced where threatening rivals provide bonuses.

  • Countries can buy subjects with cash.

  • No-CB war stability cost increased.

• Content - 360 issues solved, including:

  • New rivers added (Havel-Spree system).

  • More countries added in Manchuria, Mongolia, and Xinjiang.

  • South America areas reorganized.

  • New historical events and banks (e.g., Monte dei Paschi).

• Interface - 286 issues solved, including:

  • Economic Base map mode added.

  • Coalitions now visible in diplomacy panel.

  • River map mode added.

  • Upgradeable buildings alert added.

  • Trade panel redesigned to show profit and market balance.

• AI - 100 issues solved, including:

  • AI prefers existing casus belli instead of fabricating claims.

  • AI better evaluates military strength before peace deals.

  • Improved transport logistics and sieging behavior.

  • AI now replaces rivals that are no longer threats.

• Modding - 96 issues solved, including:

  • Added variable maps (new data structure for scripts).

  • Added new triggers and effects for modifiers.

  • Added custom culture naming support.

  • Expanded casus belli scripting options.

• Bugfixes - 77 issues solved, including:

  • Fixed many AI crashes and desync issues.

  • Fixed mercenary and levy calculation bugs.

  • Fixed war leader and peace deal issues.

  • Fixed multiple tooltip and UI errors.

• Multiplayer - 15 issues solved.

• Onboarding - 12 issues solved.

• Miscellaneous - 12 issues solved.

• Audio - 3 issues solved.

• Translation - 2 issues solved.

Our full notes are too long too share on steam, so you can find a link to them below:

As mentioned in yesterday's post[forum.paradoxplaza.com], we've already got hotfixes lined up to address some of the known issues, such as levies being stuck as raised. And we'll continue to monitor feedback for if tweaks are needed. Thank you all! 

As usual, here is a list of handy EU5 links:

Be Ambitious!

Hello Everyone and Welcome to another Happy Wednesday where we tell you more about Europa Universalis V.

Earlier today we released the 1.1.6 beta, but we still have some issues we want to sort out before releasing the final version, so expect at least 1 more update after this. We had some interesting times last week, as the storm just before the carnival blew over a large tree outside the office, ripping our fiber optic internet cable apart. It took a while to get technicians to fit new cables, so we had to rely on old-fashioned emergency wifi/4g.

So far, for the next update of the beta, we have fixed river connections in Europe and most of Africa, and are working on further updates there. Here you have some screenshots of the process:

Old and new versions of the rivers mapmode across Europe.

Because it may be a bit difficult to notice some of the differences, let’s take a look at a close-up to river Po, so it can be compared with last week’s TT screenshot:

River Po and its affluents are now properly connected, and it also passes through locations you’d expect it to, such as Firenzuola. Note: This is on our internal development mapmode, which we plan to release along with the 1.2 update, as we still need to polish it a bit more.

And something else that we’ve also added: the Havel-Spree river system! Besides being very demanded by the community, we’ve checked our GIS data, and it was actually an overlook, as this river system covers the minimum length and width we set for rivers to appear - but the data was not sorted out correctly, so we’ve now corrected this for 1.1.7!

We also fixed an issue with navies not being able to gather food, and we have nerfed combined arms from being insanely overpowered at giving a total of 60% power down to a mere +18% in Age of Revolutions.

We are still tweaking the starting economy, to ease the learning cliff somewhat. We are also working on the bug that makes the tax base and economical base fluctuate dramatically the first few months.

Next week is Tinto Talks #100, maybe it's a boring one…

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