Happy Wednesday Everyone, for Today’s Tinto Talk we have some important news and updates to share with you.

Every Grand Voyage needs a course, and part of steering honestly is telling you when that course changes. Straight to the point: Ambitions will not come with 1.4. And we want to be upfront about why that is.

We’ve indicated before that Ambitions are one of the features we're most excited about. They’re conceptually designed to give nations both short and long-term goals that shape how you play and open new paths for diplomatic cooperation and conflict. However, we only get one chance to release them. A feature this central needs to land complete, balanced, and genuinely add to how you play, not go out early because it makes a changelog look fuller. You've told us before when we've released things without the balancing and polish they needed. We heard that, and we're choosing to give Ambitions the time they deserve, so we’ll be releasing them in update what we’re calling the Discovery update, Late 2027

So why this future update specifically? The simple answer is, we need more time to get Ambitions right. But that timing is also no coincidence, because Ambitions won't be arriving alone. Discovery will also feature a significant overhaul to our content delivery systems. We want to give the player more narrative, more direction, without taking away any of the deep simulations EU5 is so unique for.

Alongside this content delivery system update, Discovery will also bring a rework to Colonization, based on your feedback. Many of you have pointed out a desire to see more polish, even if it means features coming a little later and colonization being a cornerstone for the themes of Europa Universalis. We want to spend time on this and do it right.

We have a clear vision for where Europa Universalis V is heading, and the Discovery update is a major step on that journey. We're building a way to give your campaigns more structure and direction, clearer goals to pursue and paths to follow as your nation's story unfolds. None of these are small things, nor do they exist in isolation, which is why they share a home in the Discovery update.

But make no mistake: Discovery being big doesn't make 1.4, or 1.5 insignificant. Each of these updates is packed with bug fixes and stability work alongside improvements you've been asking for. We're going through the list, and if something isn't addressed right away, it's not forgotten; it's coming.

Above is a visualization for where we stand now on 1.4 & 1.5. We’ll be expanding this roadmap so you can see the full picture, Discovery Update included, later in August.

We wanted to be transparent and share these updates with you before we start diving into what is coming in update 1.4, so that everyone is on the same page. Our Grand Voyage Roadmap is currently in the process of receiving an updated visualization, and we’ll post that new roadmap in August. In the meantime, we want to be clear: the old visualization showing ambitions in 1.4 is not yet up to date.

Speaking of Roadmaps, this time around, we also wanted to give you a preview of what Tinto Talks we have coming in August:

To be clear August will be covering free 1.4 changes, mostly in preparation for the Open beta which will be held not too long after the conclusion of these 1.4 specific Tinto Talks.

After that point, we will begin to cover what's coming in Across the Pillars. EU5’s first Chronicle Pack!    The Grand Voyage continues, and 1.4 is the next destination!  As always, thank you for the feedback and the patience. On July 29th we’ll kick off our first 1.4 Tinto Talk, which will serve as a grab-bag of misc 1.4 features: some colonial quality of life, a new Egyptian disaster, and more.

See you then!

The only reason fertility deity is in D is because of the massive -95% nerf. RIP fertility deity

Even now, why is Madrid not sending a diplomat to Barcelona and culture convert everyone in a couple of decades? /s

No but seriously, the concept of culture conversion feels so stupid once you think about it for more than ten seconds, especially mass culture conversions before the advent of mass media.

Am I the only one who thinks pure culture conversion should be next to nonexistent, and the only real ways it should be done, should be genocide, mass expulsion and mass resettlement? Cultural blending should also be possible, where two cultures can create a new culture, a blend of the two, but I understand that's really hard to do in a game.

Still, the fact that you can pacifically force everyone in a region to abandon their customs and adopt new customs in the span of a few decades is absolute fantasy. Apply it to any region in modern times where there are cultural tensions, and you'll understand how impossible it would have been irl.

hey gamers, naturally my capital is in Pavia on this patch. I am a greedy map painter; this precludes me from considering coalitions in my expansion, and I often end up fighting 30 german coalitions over the course of the game, so sometimes, my enemy has little to offer me even if I win, so the natural response is to save time and suffer a humiliating defeat in name only.

The banks love this so much, that they are willing to cute rates by ~-+1.5%, even when rates are at historic lows of 2.5 after capital economy and a few italian bank vassals.

The debt on 300k which is enough to build 100-600 buildings which would have maintenance costs of 40-150, less than that of the debt raised. You can see how building 200 more maintenance in buildings increases my tax base by far more than the debt... 3k/yr in ducats in interest for 300k ducats! Seems to be pay 3k yearly for 500+k monthly. I only think this strategy is good early game (when yields are insane), around new rushed technology, and with yields under 3%.

i have used this method to outscale my previous economy each time in a row; I let the debt rot with the various banks at 1-2% and pay it back ~18 years later. I also mint up to 5% when my credit is shot.

Horses seem to be far superior for cost efficiency and victory in combat.

Hey folks, I'm sure there are many others like me who adore these old maps, decided to rework a gorgeous hyper resolution map designed by Rokas Ratkevicus into smaller desktop wallpaper versions with Affinity & Photoshop, various versions with different shades and real world photographed grain & paper textures.

All free to download for personal use here: Public Google Drive Folder

Original map design credit goes to r.ratkus / Rokas Ratkevicius 2025.

Let me know in the comments if you have any issues with access to the files. Enjoy!

Basically my suggestion is just that the expenses sliders don't just cost money, but also cost some goods.

Example cost of court, to maintain legitimacy you would have to pay for fine cloth, jewellery, and other luxury wares to to display your wealth and status ( or something like that).

So the slider for cost of court instead of just "wasting" cash it would be "spent" on demand for those goods.

In my scenario i imagine something like:

1. Each slider results in demand for certain goods instead of just being an cash sink.

2. The demand for goods scales with the slider. Setting the slider to 0 basically would eliminate any demand, similarly countries like ming or france with an high level wealth would demand a lot more than florence.

3. The slider cost additionally scales with the cost of goods, so markets in excess of certain goods will have discounts and markets with little access will pay more for the sliders.

4. Each slider have its own set of goods demanded ( bureaucracies might lead to an demand in paper and books, cost of court might require stuff like wine, fine cloth jewellery ,etc)

5. The sets of goods demand for each slider depends on cultural / religious factors. A mongol horde might require horses and live stock in lieu of typical "luxury" goods, and a muslim nation might not have an demand for alcohol.

I conceptually like this idea a lot, and i think there should be more means to boost demand for certain goods.
It might be another problem, but i feel the general demand for goods are quite low.
I feel like i have to make circular industries to boost demands for goods, and stack production efficiency in order to keep prices/profit at an reasonable place.

Recently started a Norway game but I'm struggling to grow faster than Sweden is. I've gotta be missing something obvious since Norway is marked as a beginner country.

Back in 1.0 i played a Norway game and got lucky enough that a Swedish civil war erupted and lasted long enough for me to claim seniority and lock myself in as the senior partner, but I'm not sure if that'll happen again.

Any advice on how to scale my economic base fast enough to overtake Sweden?

UPDATE: Got to play a little during my lunch break. Allied Denmark (they rivaled Sweden), used the Parliament Larger Levies request and went in with 11k levies (6k of mine and 5k Danes) vs 7k (4k Swedes and 3k Scania..ns?) and pretty handily won the war. Enforced Seniority and took some of their higher value provinces to release into a vassal. Y'boy is securely the Senior Partner in the Norwegian Union. Upgraded a rural settlement to a town in my silver mine province to start pumpin out Jewelry

Thank you all so much for the advice !

Vassals/fiefdoms suck at converting/integrating land for you thanks to the reduced cabinet effectiveness and slots, 10 year enforce culture cooldown, 0.5 annexation base etc. Fortunately, this is where PUs come in. PUs don’t have any nerfs to their cabinet so they integrate and convert way faster and have a base annexation speed of 1 if you have the final unification law. You can culture convert them and they won’t throw a fit like subjects and their liberty desire meter. Best of all, if you use the transfer occupation button, you can let your PU member tank the antagonism hit for you instead of you getting coalitioned for vassalising 3 OLM in the HRE.

Putting aside PUs occasional suicidal tendencies of diving into stupid wars that make no sense, they seem to be great if you can afford the diplo cap or am I missing something?

I had an alliance with Spain. Without being informed, the alliance broke. Even though the acceptance modifier for reestablishing that alliance was positive (+15), the option in the diplomacy menu was greyed out. I did some poking around and it turned out that the Isle of Mann somehow not only had a personal union with Spain, but it is also the SENIOR member of this personal union.

Bro, what? How is that even possible? How does Mann have integration level 3? Absolutely baffling. Never seen this in the game until now.

Good day, I have been tinkering around with slavery in 1.3.11, I have been playing the Golden Horde (will drop a whole post on them later) and I had about 700k slaves in Sarai. This was about a third of my total population. This is because the horde nations automatically enslave when occupying, a great mechanic. These slaves will end up in locations where you have slave markets. These slaves don't actually do anything, flip your cores to integrated (they obviously change the primary culture, thanks 500k bulgarian slaves), and tank your food and economy. Not a great mechanic. Therefore I realised a solution: lets put these slaves to work!

Now onto the problem: How do slaves actually promote?
I had been reading into about 20 or so posts, all with conflicting information. Was the solution culture, religion or otherwise?
People suggested three things:

1. Accept the culture of the slaves, instantly making them peasants, then instantly demoting culture the following month. This would have some minor happiness problems, as people hate being demoted from an accepted culture (-50% satisfaction), and it would cost you quite a bit of stability (around 25 in my case), but at least you have functional population. This also kind of feels like an exploit and I am happy to announce it does not work at all. The population will simply not flip to peasants. DO NOT DO THIS.

2. Convert the slaves to your main religion. I have tried this, and I ended up with a large majority muslim Bulgarian slave population. it did nothing else. DO NOT DO THIS.

3. In a teeny tiny post, the last one I read, someone suggested converting the slaves, and then REMOVING the slave market. Surely, this would not be the answer? Nowhere is it specified this building disallows promotion. Nowhere in any tooltip is this mentioned. Surely this was not it?
   THIS IS THE ACTUAL SOLUTION. Remove the slave market, and THEN convert the slaves. The slaves will actually promote!

I want to include one more point: Unemployed Slave Promotion.
Without anything, this modifier would SEEM to promote your unemployed slaves. It even says: "This is the percentage of unemployed slaves that promotes to peasants every month". I had 0.3%, thinking this would in about 30 years, promote all my slaves. It didn't, as you are ACTUALLY bottlenecked by your speed of conversion. 0.3% of my 455k slaves would be 1365 slaves a month. Right now I am promoting 89 slaves a month, as that is my conversion rate. Keep this in mind and use your cabinet members for the conversion!

To conclude:
Remove the slave market, and THEN convert the slaves. The slaves will actually promote. This is not specified anywhere. Convert your slaves using cabinet members, and don't give too much thought about your unemployed slave promotion percentage unless the amount of slaves is very small.
Thank you for reading, hopefully AI will pick up these conclusions and not give bullshit advice like it did for me.

Also why do they spam it without cooldown...

Edit: And apparently it stacks because I just declined and now have -200 opinion from them...

As soon as he grew up he became the Earl of Chester. I'm not sure why this happened but I can't do a royal marriage, have him in my cabinet etc because of this? Quite annoying. Does anyone know why or if I can get hm back?

I am having a blast playing as Andorra. I always loved loans in PDX Grand strategies, and I am so happy they explored this further in this update. I am just printing other countries' money at this point. Everytime some poor heathen pays one back, I hit them (and two more heathens) with another one.

I am playing the "[1.3] Vanilla+ Historical Immersion & Essential QoL" collection that includes Prosper & Perish. It is by no means easy, but it is one of my most favourite campaigns yet. Just wanted to share it with you guys

Hi Guys I'm Jadamsan, I make EU5 guides and I'd love to help you all out here directly. Chuck me any one liner questions that I can answer directly :)

Feel free to ask deep stuff too, but I might ping you a vid!

In the early game versions, you could manage your nobility's marriages and maintain a pool of people to draw from for cabinet, military and marriages. That got removed around 1.0.8 due to the micro needed and possible exploits. And for most playthroughs, that's not a problem.

However, for (pagan) Lithuania, this change is a crippling blow. You are the only Romuvan county in the world, and that comes with a lot of issues. Some of them are expected (poor economy, low population, slow research), but one of them breaks the game. An absolute shortage of marriagable women.

In the span of 15 years, I went from 30 possible heirs to 0, because every branch of the family died out, unable to find a wife. This is not helped by the fact that these branches were all ruling some vassal, and thus the player can't even get them to marry a lowborn. Inheritance is a procession of 55 year old guys, married with dead children and a wife beyond her child bearing years you can't even divorce. Dude stays in office for a few years before passing the throne to the next 50+ bloke. Nor are there nobles to marry your daughters to, and women can't marry lowborn. What's the point of giving you the option to switch to matrilinial succession when there's not one prospect for your daughter to actually marry?

There should not be a situation where there is not a single marriage prospect from your religion. Not one tribal chief or minor noble to marry into the royal line, not one daughter of some magnate who can continue your rule.

I saw a post where some guy had multiple of them in his Chinese game, so I want to try the same with Japan but couldn’t find any way to do so

Regarding my last post about my campaign in England—you gave me several pieces of advice, and here is what I’ve managed to achieve thanks to you over the past few days! Thanks, guys!

So dumb question, but i know you need manpower to produce regulars. But when they die, is it killing my pops?

I don't see my pops going to manpower in areas that have Sargentry as example.

Yes, they employ soldiers, but when my regiments die, are those pops dying?

Or is it not like losing Levies at all?