Most of the team is now off for the holidays, and the final remaining of us leaves today for up to two weeks of relaxations with friends and family.The Europa Universalis IV team have worked very hard this year in making the foundations of a rather awesome game which has now reached the alpha stage, which means that the game is feature complete. When we get back from the holidays, the team will work towards the beta, where the remaining content gets into the game, including final events, tutorial and AI.In the last two weeks, we've done quite a lot of multiplayer testing with QA Team and the Design Team.It sounds a bit pretentious to say team when QA is 3 people and design team is me and King, but wellWe have run multiple campaigns as the 5 western powers for the first 100-150 years to tweak the start of colonisation and expansion.Constantly rotating players between countries and tweaking mechanics and balance to improve playability.What we discovered was that the game, in this early stage, it is damn fun!And sometimes you have to admit that you lost a war, and cut your losses.Sometimes you become really proud of your accomplishments, and sometimes you go, why the hell did I just do that??So what has worked out the best?- Trade, where navies are vital.- Monarch Power, the strategies are endless.- Combat, the changes make warfare so much more fun and battles interesting.OTOH, there are some interfaces that needs to be reworked to be easier to handle and give better interfaces, especially the diplomatic and province interfaces..Here's a screenshot of my France in one of the sessions, a few months after the peace where I had finally defeated Burgundy and their perfidious allies..We're back after January 6th to conquer the world and enslave humanity![video=youtube;W35yQuO4fq0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W35yQuO4fq0[/video]