Ultimate Gameplay Mod

A full gameplay rework for Europa Universalis V. UGM retunes the systems the game already runs on so the whole world plays a credible game: an economy with working supply and demand, epidemics that burn out, an AI that fights and expands like a real rival, wars decided by battles rather than endless sieges, and a Holy Roman Empire a player can actually hold together. No new map and no total overhaul. Every change applies to the player and the AI on the same terms.

UGM ships as one opinionated, always-on configuration, with a small in-game settings panel for the two contested toggles. Performance is handled by the sibling mod UPM and visuals by UVM; UGM is the gameplay pillar of the Ultimate Mod Collection.

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The deepest part of the rework. Price formation is repaired so a falling staple price no longer drops poor buyers out of the market, which is what collapsed estate income and base tax. Staples stay affordable, luxuries are gated to genuinely prosperous markets, and stockpiles stop crashing prices flat, so markets stay differentiated instead of flattening out by the mid-game.

• Supply and demand that work: staple goods reach low-wealth buyers sooner, so a price crash no longer empties the market and spirals estates into bankruptcy.
• Luxuries earn their place: porcelain, fine cloth, jewelry, lacquerware and books need real development before a market demands them, ending the "everything maxed early" economy and luxury markets in undeveloped periphery.
• Production chains that pay: the production buildings, one-level productions and goods-demand data are reshaped so build margins line up with the new demand curve and producing goods is profitable again.
• A resource map with character: the raw-material map is rebuilt from the ground up across every location, so regions carry plausible, viable resources instead of a flattened distribution.
• Wide play rewarded: committing a cabinet slot to control reaches a usable band in a reasonable span instead of a twenty-year glacier.

• Resistance finally works: smallpox, influenza, typhus and measles get a herd-immunity throttle taken from the game’s own bubonic-plague pattern, so an outbreak loses momentum once enough of a region is immune and is killed off once it fades, instead of leapfrogging across the map forever.
• Plague as a periodic threat: earned resistance is durable but never permanent, so disease returns over the centuries rather than emptying the map or vanishing for good. Smallpox no longer out-kills the Black Death.
• Malaria back where it belongs: inland regions that were seeding coastal-style malaria are corrected, while real harbours keep their historical disease.

• An AI that plays the map: it expands, colonizes and presses advantages instead of sitting idle, so the 1337 map no longer freezes in place. Success no longer punishes itself into passivity.
• History, gently railed: notorious ahistorical blobbers are held back by area-preference cages, and sparse, dated historical-collapse pulses nudge the map toward plausible lines without buffing or penalizing any country.
• Diplomacy as tit-for-tat: allies join provocable wars and grudges fade over time, with AI biases re-aimed to make the AI play better rather than to advantage it.

• No more bottomless armies: the root cause, the AI gold-hoard, is cut at the source rather than re-taxing a price the base game already nerfed.
• A real floor on the discount: however many discount sources stack, mercenaries are never free, so merc cost can no longer be gamed to almost nothing.
• Scarcer pools and a reliance cost: pools replenish slower, and leaning on many hired companies accrues escalating instability (a toggle you can turn off).

• Subjects that stay manageable: vassals no longer spike to many times your relative power and drain your diplomacy. The brake moves to a gold tribute, the diplomatic-capacity cost is cut, annexation is reachable, and fresh conquests carry a disloyalty floor, so decentralized subject-swarm play is feasible.
• A sane Great Power ranking: deserving powers reach their proper tier instead of the broken area-dominance ordering that ranked minor islands above major empires.

• Battles decide wars: morale collapses faster so a beaten army breaks, assaults are a real men-for-time decision with AI parity, and wide-war mop-up grinds less, while a floor still guards against a single unlucky stack-wipe.
• Size and composition matter: a tighter frontage cap, repriced cavalry, reworked fort costs and encirclement attrition reward a well-built army over a deathstack.
• Trade fleets viable, megafleets penalized: the naval-cost wall is softened so a coastal minor can field a defensive squadron, while the anti-megafleet brake stays in place.

• The Golden Bull within reach: Imperial Authority no longer bleeds negative for a realistically sized 1337 Empire, so the Emperor can codify reforms at a historically reachable membership.
• The crown as an asset: while Authority stays healthy the Emperor gains the martial backbone of the princes, so leading the Empire is worth holding.

• Guelphs and Ghibellines that matter: passive faction scoring is gated to members whose capital is in Italy, the Emperor is excluded from Ghibelline strength, and the faction war goal is repriced so the situation produces a faction outcome, not free conquest of Italian capitals.
• Estate emergencies with teeth: the most-exploited emergency grants carry a real, persistent cost and a longer cooldown, the worst spam agendas are de-spammed, and adopting a bureaucracy is a committing choice again.

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UGM ships as one always-on configuration. The two contested correctives live in an in-game Ultimate Mods Settings panel, opened from the pause menu (Escape) or a launcher button on the action bar in the lower-left corner of the screen. Both default on:

• Historical Rails: the yearly historical world-shaping pulses (steppe collapse, Hundred Years War relief, Sengoku activation).
• Mercenary Reliance corrective: the escalating instability for fielding many hired companies. The merc discount-floor fix stays on regardless.

• Built for the current Europa Universalis V patch; requires nothing else.
• Save-safe to load onto an existing campaign, though a fresh start is recommended for the full rework.
• Runs alongside the rest of the Ultimate Mod Collection. Conflicts with mods editing the same defines, modifiers or the location resource map; load UGM last. Not compatible with full overhauls.

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Part of the Ultimate Mod Collection: UGM (gameplay), UPM (performance), UVM (visuals), UCT (tools).
Feedback and bug reports are welcome.

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