not working on this mod currently, but still ambiently thinking about how #eu5 modding works.

the custom scripting language their games use dates back to Europa Universalis 2 (2001). a paradox dev explained that it was initially only used for defining objects (like "this building is named Bungus and its model file is /models/wacky/bungus.mdl), but slowly expanded to have more logic features -- things like "there should be a way to change a building's name if certain conditions are met", etc., until it eventually grew text substitution and boolean logic and loops and so on.

they tried using lua for one game but found it to be too slow, and since they already had so many team members who were familiar with their custom scripting language, they went back to it for all future games.

the langauge has a lot of weird quirks and idiosyncracies, but it works, and it's fast. i understand why it exists, and i don't think paradox should remove it, but it is a perfect example of greenspun's tenth rule.

winter of 1673. the little ice age won't stop.
millions of people died. but on the other hand: some of my levies have little christmas hats :3

so many people are dying on both sides. i'm winning, but not as hard as i want to. if only novgorod accepted my very fair peace offer then a lot of this blood wouldn't be spilled right now

are you kidding me

summer of 1665 (little ice age)
the summer invasion of 1665 starts with a massive offensive to the capital of novgorod. the goal is to siege it down before the great russian winter hits and decimates my forces

1621
it's coming down to this. being king of muscovy, novgorod, vladimir, ryazan, and kazan, i must now seek rivalry with the principality of kyiv in the south.

1594
managed to get novgorod back under my wing. vladimir also suspiciously decimated in size, and their ally vanished from earth altogether. it's all coming to plan

russia 1578
recently learned that it is better to not annex provinces; rather, you want to liberate and then immediately vassalize them. this causes less perceived aggression.
i managed to partition vladimir to the north (gordets) and also have kazan as an orthodox christian tributary estate. i also have samara. that's about two million people as vassals. i am starting to become quite powerful.
right now my goal is to make moskva as populous as possible. i have 275k people living there. i'm actively encouraging migration there, but it's hard.

europe in 1545 is a bit of a mess