Update 1.4 for Europa Universalis V, code-named Río Salado, is the biggest confirmed batch of changes this site has tracked in a single update, and it releases October 28, 2026, with the open beta live since October 1, 2026, per the September 22 Grand Voyage Roadmap update, which also named 1.5 “Fealty” and announced the 2.0 “Discovery Update,” all covered in the roadmap and beta date article. Everything below comes from the official Tinto Talks developer diaries that Paradox publishes weekly, read directly from the game’s Steam announcements page. Nine of them are in so far, Tinto Talks 117 through 125, and this page assembles the confirmed picture up to the most recent one. Treat every line as a preview, not live content: none of it is in the current build of the game, and the developers have said repeatedly that preview numbers and mechanics can change. Two clarifications belong at the top because the community keeps tripping over them. Ambitions are not in 1.4; they were explicitly moved out to a future update called Discovery, currently targeted for Late 2027, which will also bring a Colonization rework and a content delivery overhaul. And the update itself is framed as centered on pre-1500s Iberia rather than on the colonization era.

The topics below are grouped by system, and each represents the confirmed state at the time of writing. The diaries did not all land in the order originally announced, so view the topics as confirmed and the announced schedule as history. Because this is a living document, it will be refreshed as new Tinto Talks post, and every section links out to a dedicated article where this site already covers a system in full.

Politics and diplomacy

The headliner is Political Influence, a new 0 to 100 country currency representing the ruler’s political capital, and keeping it high raises base Crown Power by up to 20%. That system already has its own article on this site, so only its shape is repeated here, and the Political Influence guide carries the full detail.

Diplomacy gains new actions. Demand War Leadership and Offer War Leadership make war leadership something to negotiate rather than something that just happens. Inheritance Contracts let a paying monarchy buy the right to inherit an heirless monarchy, with the cost scaled by development and running roughly between 50 and 1500 gold. Betrothals turn marriages into promises, available for children aged two and up.

Hegemony antagonism gets flattened: the penalty is now a flat +10% instead of scaling up to +100% when you hold all five hegemonic titles, and each hegemony held grants +1 diplomatic reputation. The diplomacy automation overhaul is large. High-stakes actions like changing religion, primary culture, or succession law, declaring war, forming alliances, and joining International Organizations can no longer be automated at all. Automation now leaves alone the ongoing actions you personally started instead of cancelling them, fixing the automation keeps fighting me complaint, and the diplomat cap rises from 1 to 3. The same diary also introduced estate private armies for the Nobles and Cossacks, which have their own full guide on this site.

Decisions and the Content Tab

Decisions return as a feature, and they arrive inside a new Content Tab that centralizes a country’s unique reforms, advances, decisions, policies and laws, subject types, and units in one place. Many 1.4 decisions convert content that previously waited on a random event to fire into player-driven, clickable actions, and the developers are explicit that this is the first iteration of a content delivery system they will keep building on. Decisions can be single-use or repeatable, country-specific or generic, and each one shows a visible progress bar toward its requirements. Decisions now have their own full guide on this site.

Expeditions

Expeditions are the newest and most work-in-progress item in 1.4. The developers called them explicitly an early look, with the system still under development and being iterated on, so this section and the dedicated article lean on that warning rather than hiding it. The system has three flavored examples confirmed so far: Circumnavigation, a race to sail all the way around the world; the Treasure Fleet, a Middle Kingdom exclusive; and the Great Pilgrimage and the Royal Hajj, two religious expeditions. Hard numbers are thin everywhere in the diary, so next to no exact figures exist for any of these. Some expeditions will be exclusive to the paid Across the Pillars DLC, EU5’s first Chronicle Pack, and none of those have been shown yet. The full Expeditions guide covers all three confirmed examples in detail.

Colonization and population

Colonization picks up clarity and direction. Colonial charters now let a player pick the goal up front, Form Colonial Nation, Join Colonial Nation, or Keep as Territory, instead of hitting an event popup at completion. Colonies get migration and ETA indicators plus milestone messages, and a fully self-sustaining colony is explicitly marked Self Sustaining. Conquistadors are built at a homeland port instead of a colonial port, gain auxiliary units to prevent starvation, and joining a conquistador war automatically makes you the war leader.

Population growth now comes from actual food surplus rather than hoarded stockpiles. Spare land no longer speeds growth by itself, growth slows as locations approach capacity, and overcrowded locations lose people. Large cities and harsh winters reduce local food production. A new Egyptian Plague endemic disease models over 50 historical Mamluk-era outbreaks between 1348 and 1517, spawning roughly every few years in the Nile delta and occasionally spreading to the Levant, and it runs on its own resistance track, so Black Death survivors get no immunity.

Cultures get a sharper tier system in the same diary cycle. The old Discriminated tier is renamed to Ignored, and a new level below it takes the Discriminated name. That new tier represents active oppression, dramatically increasing cultural assimilation at the cost of pop satisfaction and increased emigration, and countries dislike you for discriminating. Estates put forward Parliament agendas to accept or discriminate against cultures they like or dislike, which is a natural link to the Parliament guide already on this site. Migration also gets direct tools: an Age of Reformation advance unlocks a Direct Domestic Migration cabinet action that moves pops from one location to another over ten years.

Mercenaries and combat

Mercenaries get more expensive and more demanding. Hiring costs roughly twice as much upfront and 35% more in monthly upkeep, they consume 50% more food in the field than regulars, and hiring from rival-owned soil carries a 25% default hostile territory surcharge. A new Mercenary Market law arrives in the Age of Renaissance with four policy options: Condottieri Business, Open Markets, Restricted Markets, and Unrestricted Market, which is the 1.3 default.

Combat numbers shift down across the board. Cavalry combat power drops from 4 to 3.25, the flanking bonus is cut from +110% for light cavalry and +100% for heavy down to +60% for both, and the Napoleonic Warfare advance is reworked to grant +5% discipline instead of ignoring zones of control. Sieges get a smaller stepping-stone rework: artillery now needs only 2 regiments per bonus point against forts instead of 3, and forts auto-surrender below 5% garrison strength instead of below 10 defenders, ahead of the bigger siege rework the developers say is planned for 1.5. Both systems get their own dedicated deep-dive on what changes in 1.4.

Economy and trade

The September 16 diary, Tinto Talks 124, brings the largest confirmed economic overhaul of the update so far. Trade Orders become a priority queue at the heart of an involvement ladder that runs from full automation to full manual control, with editable parameters like minimum acceptable profit, target Markets, and a Profit, Food, or shortage-fixing focus. Tariffs and negative-tariff Subventions let Market Owners tax foreign trade happening inside their own Markets, and a new Promote Industry action specializes production at Area level with slots that scale by rank. Nine early specialization Urban Rights plus two Market-focused rights are confirmed, with the diary noting their values are not final. Every confirmed change is covered in the dedicated 1.4 economy and trade guide.

Catholicism and religion

The September 23 diary, Tinto Talks 125, opens the confirmed Catholic rework of 1.4, and it is part one of a four-week arc hosted by Content Design Lead Pavía. Cardinals stop being a building and become named characters, Crusades and Jihads gain a defined leader and stakes, and a new Religious Orders mechanic places orders physically in provinces. The Crusade and Jihad half already has specific confirmed content, while Cardinals and Religious Orders are confirmed at the framing level with detail promised in the weeks ahead. Everything confirmed so far is in the dedicated Catholicism guide.

The Campaign Timeline, performance, and pacing

The September 9 diary, Tinto Talks 123, led with a genuinely free feature: the Campaign Timeline. It is free with 1.4 and explicitly not part of the Across the Pillars DLC. It lets you rewind to any point in a campaign and watch the map, one day at a time if you want, with nudge increments from a single day up to 50 years, a play button, and camera jump toggles for specific regions. At launch it also breaks down the primary stats, Population, Economic base, and Tax Base, sortable as pie charts or direct ranks. It lives in the Content Tab and in the top-right UI panel.

The same diary covered performance, and the headline is a pacing change with real consequences: hourly ticks are removed in 1.4. Ticks now run day to day, as they did in EU4, and Speeds 6 and 7 are gone, making speed 5 the maximum again. Removing the hourly tick adds roughly 10 to 15% faster performance on its own. Development also shared an internal observer-mode example, going from 2 minutes 45 seconds to reach January 1339 on 1.3 down to 47 seconds on the latest internal 1.4 build, on high-end hardware and with an honest caveat that exotic office stats should not be taken at face value for every system. The complacency system, the one that penalized growing too large, is removed completely in 1.4.

The same diary rounded out with a batch of balance and state-of-the-game items. An estate sitting above 25% power now puts a small drain on your legitimacy or its equivalent. Low government power is being rebalanced so that collapse hurts similarly across government types, with low devotion weighing harder on clergy and stability for Theocracies, and two new disasters, one for Theocracies and one for Republics, are confirmed as in the works. Theocracies, Steppe Hordes, and Tribes each get their own new capital flavor building. These items are confirmed but still being tuned, which is the normal state of a pre-beta build.

UI and quality of life

The UI pass is steady, practical stuff. The road builder gets a preview of the road before you build it, plus an option to skip sections where rivers or maritime connections already beat a road. Laws move to their own dedicated vertical panel, out of a cramped subtab. The country and throne-room panel is reorganized, a new Urbanization Panel takes over the old Production Locations screen, the budget panel gains a Tax Base Ratio stat, and a Turmoils Panel centralizes diseases, rebels, and movements in one place. Location building queues become visible and editable, up to six queue types. Two new map modes arrive, War Score and Crown Power, both per location. The Trade Orders UI overhaul is covered in the 1.4 economy guide.

What is still coming

The confirmed teases, none of them with dates: Catholicism updates, a small surprise 1.4 feature that has not been explained and is not guessed at here, and more UI quality of life. The economy and trade changes teased in the September diary arrived with Tinto Talks 124 and are covered in the 1.4 economy guide. Update 1.4’s stable release is confirmed for October 28, 2026, with the open beta that started October 1 shaping what the final version looks like, per the September 22 Grand Voyage Roadmap update. Update 1.5 Fealty and the 2.0 Discovery Update are announced but undated. When it does land, this page gets its next regular refresh, because everything above is only what has been shown so far, and the full shape of Río Salado is still being assembled one Wednesday at a time.