r/AnteBellum

Although active development of the EU5 version of Ante Bellum has been paused and most of the team has moved back to EU4, some work is still being done behind the scenes. Recently, we finished this abomination: the country setup for the Western Frankish region.

The new Bulgarian mission tree begins with a small conquest branch available from the start. Once you conquer Tsarigrad, you will be able to choose Bulgarias future path by selecting one of three branching options, each of which massively expands the conquest branch in a different direction. The choices are:

• Illyrian & Western Path — Forge Illyria into the beacon of South Slavic unity, bring Italy under your heel, westernize the nation, encroach upon the Empire and force it to embrace Holy Orthodoxy as its official faith.
• Slavic Path — Eliminate the Magyar threat, revive the spirit of Moravia, complete Lendia’s Christianization mission, and unite all of Rus' under the banners of the Tsardom of Slavia.
• Eastern Roman Path - Put an end to the decaying Byzantine Empire and take its place as the leader of the Orthodox world. Slavicize the Greeks and launch a campaign to reclaim all the lands lost by Christendom over the centuries.

The final part of the mission tree will consist of tall missions that are likewise shared by all three paths.

Hello everyone. I would like to inform you that we have decided to indefinitely pause the active development of Ante Bellum for Europa Universalis V. While this decision might come as a surprise to some of you, for many who have been following our development and the wider EU5 community, it will likely come as no shock. Before I explain the reasons, I would like to assure you that this does not necessarily mean the end of Ante Bellum in EU5. We will likely still keep working on some setup related aspects of the mod, hoping that we may be able to return to active development in the future. Since I want to be very transparent with you, let me explain the main reasons that led to this decision:

• Three months ago we held a community vote regarding the future of the mod with thousands of votes in which 79% of the participants voted against us continuing development of AB for EU5. This was a very clear indication of the level of interest in EU5 among our community.
• EU5 has not had a higher player count than EU4 for almost three months, and we have very little reason to believe that this will change significantly in the near future.
• Likely the biggest concern is the amount of system/mechanic reworks either already done or announced in the roadmap. Repeated reworks of core mechanics means that there is a significant risk that any content we create will need to be completely reworked or scrapped after future patches. This makes it extremely difficult for a small team such as ours to justify the time investment.
• Similarly, we are concerned about EU5s approach to balance, since we feel that the balance of the game is handled as if it were an online competitive moba rather than a long term strategic game, with patches often dramatically shifting meta, which again carries a significant risk. If patches with reactive and short term balance changes completely alter the viability of mechanics or entire systems, we would once again be forced to completely rework content that we might have spent months developing.
• One of the most anticipated content delivery systems for EU5 has been delayed by a year and a half.
• We are a very small team with only one official content designer and roughly 15 people in total actively contributing across lore, localization, editing, and playtesting. We have already invested months of work into EU5 and unfortunately, this has massively contributed to delaying the release of 1.10 by several months. Looking back, I am convinced that prioritizing the EU5 port over 1.10 was probably the biggest mistake we have ever made since the release of the mod.

For now, our priority will be to return our focus to EU4, since that is what most of you are interested in anyway. If the situation surrounding EU5 changes in the future, we will very likely return to active development. We know that many of you were genuinely excited about AB in EU5 and we are very sorry that we will not be able to deliver on those expectations for the time being. Thank you for your understanding and for continuing to support Ante Bellum!

I would like to inform you that I have started working on the Bulgarian mini-update. I have given Bulgaria two new achievements and I'm currently working on a draft of their mission tree which will include 3 branching paths.

On another note, I've found out that there is so much missing localization in 1.10 that even if script wise we were to finish the update today, it would still take like 2 to 3 months to finish all the remaining localization. Due to that, I would like to remind you of an indefinitely open ⁠recruitment of Locmasters. If you'd like to help us with the update and become a member of the team, gaining early access to 1.10 among other perks, please read the information in the recruitment channel on our Discord server and consider applying. Thank you!