Hi there, and welcome to another EU4 dev diary. This week, myself, @neondt and @Ofaloaf have decided to talk about Hungary, its starting situation, its new missions and some further flavour we have added.Now then, first a few words for the starting position. This has changed in a few ways, although the provinces on the map are the same. Firstly, as we have seen in previous dev diaries, Croatia is now a lesser partner in a PU. The two nations had been ruled together for centuries by the 15th century, hence the status quo where Croatia was a releasable tag. However, we have opted to make Croatia be a personal union partner in the upcoming patch so as to better represent the separate administration it had from that of the rest of Hungary. If, however, both Hungary and Croatia become lesser union partners of another nation e.g. Austria, Croatia will be annexed by Hungary so that the two crowns are counted as one (e.g. for the purposes of subject liberty desire).A further change concerns trade nodes. I will hand over to @Ofaloaf to discuss these changes.---Hey folks, @Ofaloaf here. Along with all the other work we've done on Hungary, we also decided that with all the new provinces in Europe, it was high time we revisited the trade node setup and considered some new additions. To that end, we've added a new node in Pest.Pest itself, along with neighboring Buda across the Danube, had been a prosperous town in the Middle Ages, although the Mongol invasions of Hungary in the late 13th century caused so much destruction that Pest had to be rebuilt practically from the ground up. By the 15th century, Buda and Pest had regained a fair amount of their former strength, and their role as a trading center only began to decline again during the Ottoman occupation.At the moment, it has only a few routes, but we're still experimenting with it to see how it'll work best with the new setup. Its primary purposes are to break up the relatively large Balkan nodes and give a little opportunity to break up the flow of trade to Austria from the Mediterranean. Along with that, Pest offers a Transcarpathian route to Krakow that should help feed northern trade a bit and make Hungarian-Polish relations a little more interesting.---The third major change to Hungary's start, which we have also already mentioned and which leads into the mission tree, is in Ladislaus Postumus now representing a viable way for Hungary to become a lesser union partner to Austria – if he comes of age and becomes both Archduke of Austria and King of Hungary, Hungary will fall under an Austrian personal union. To give a bit of background on him, Ladislaus, the Posthumous son of Albert the Magnanimous, had rightful claims to a vast territory, specifically Hungary, Bohemia and Austria. However, his claim to Hungary was disputed by Polish King Wladislaw Jagiellon, who seized the throne and led Hungary to the Crusade of Varna, which ended the day before Europa Universalis IV’s campaign starts with Wladislaw’s defeat and death. At this point, Ladislaus’ supporters sought to reassert their claims, but unfortunately for them, he was to die of suspected leukemia aged 17.The story behind Ladislaus’ life is now tied into Hungary’s missions. A new branch of the event tree begins with navigating the perils of the Hungarian succession, requiring you to not be a subject and have an adult ruler and an heir. Since one can do this by getting Matthias Corvinus via events, it is fitting that further missions in this branch are inspired by Matthias’ career. He sought to strengthen his position by the modest gambit of claiming the Bohemian crown – with Austrian support, since the Bohemian king’s son was in the process of invading Austria (besides, the Bohemian king was an excommunicated heretic). He first seized Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia, then became King of Bohemia, although his hold on the crown was decidedly shaky. We added a mission for each of these stages.The Austrians had in fact promised Matthias that he would be made King of the Romans (heir to the HRE) if he did this, but now Emperor Frederick changed his mind. Ingame, if Hungary becomes the senior PU partner of Bohemia, Hungary will be allowed to ask the Emperor to allow Hungary into the HRE and transfer Bohemia’s electorate to Hungary; however, Hungary will not find it easy to appease the Emperor enough that it will grant this. In history, the dispute would escalate to the point that Matthias invaded Austria and sought first to have Frederick recognize him has King of Bohemia, and later to take his lands. Hence, we added missions to first weaken Austria (Austria and its subjects own less than 13 provinces, Austria is not Emperor and has fewer troops than Hungary), then claim the Duchy.In another change to the starting missions, the mission “Old Alliances” will now no longer give claims on Moldavia if you ally Poland and Moldavia is a subject of Poland; however, annexing Moldavia will open up new opportunities to restore the Jagiellonian Union that existed a day prior to EU4’s start: First you must weaken Poland (like the Austrian mission “The Decline of Hungary”: Have a larger army and more development than Poland and its subjects), then you can claim the Polish throne.Phew, that’s a lot of thrones for Hungary, if they can play it well and take them all. Anyway, that’s nearly it for military-themed missions: The last two are, firstly, one that plays into the rework of the Black Army that @neondt will be talking about below; it also requires you to have better morale than all your neighbours, and gives your military a temporary boost. Secondly, as a logical end-point to the existing Balkans expansion missions, Bulwark of Christianity makes Hungary have a larger army than any Muslim neighbouring or Turko-Semitic country, and gives +3 missionary strength and -15% AE for 20 years, so that Hungary can make use of its superiority by pushing the Infidel back further.The final seven new missions are focused on the economy, prestige and governance. Since Hungary was not historically one of the richer countries, it is makes it all the more reason for them to pursue missions such as A Strong Economy and The Great City of Buda, which both strengthen the economy through the very act of completing them and through their rewards. Bibliotheca Corviana, meanwhile, reminds us that Matthias Corvinus founded one of the largest libraries in Europe and asks us to emulate him by adopting the latest innovations in the form of embracing the Renaissance and having 50 prestige. Finally, Fund the Monasteries is a reference to the influential Pauline Order and involves building a lot of churches; Unity in Belief involves achieving 100% religious unity in some way or other; and Nagyszombat University involves building a university in the Pozsony province. Each of these missions have moderate but useful temporary bonuses that, if taken when they are needed, will surely prove useful to the Hungarian player.Finally, I hand over to @neondt to talk about the new changes to the Black Army.---Hello, I’m neondt and I’m here to talk about a little extra flavour we’ve added for Hungary. This is very much tied to the upcoming [REDACTED] which I can’t go into detail about yet, so there’ll be some well-placed redactions to avoid saying too much.Right now in EU4 there are a few events about the Black Army of Hungary, essentially a standing army of mercenaries founded by Matthias Corvinus and historically disbanded before the turn of the century. They’re currently represented as a modifier that improves mercenary discipline, and we felt there was room for improvement given the shiny new tools available to us.In next year’s European update the Black Army will instead become a [REDACTED] with [REDACTED] modifiers, enabled by the same event that once gave the old modifier. With each passing ruler you’ll still have to decide whether to maintain it, but the monetary cost for doing so has been removed as that’s covered by [REDACTED].The End of the Black Army event which removed the Black Army modifier will now occur somewhat earlier, but we’ve added a new option. You’ll now have the option to reform and institutionalize the Black Army, enabling a new Government Reform:The Institutionalized Black Army reform grants a passive bonus to both mercenary costs and mercenary discipline, as well as enabling [REDACTED]. The Nobility estate will not however be pleased that the King has personal control over the army, thus relying less on levies mustered by the nobles themselves. You'll also never need to renew the Black Army on ruler death.That's all for today! We're once again not sure what we'll talk about next week, so feel free to give us some suggestions in the comments.