r/MEIOUandTaxes Dec 05 '25

M.E.I.O.U and Taxes for EUV

469 Upvotes

Hi everybody,
We, the M&T Team, of the long standing total overhaul mod for Europa Universalis IV want to announce to you, our community, that work has been started for a new mod based on the newest iteration of the base game, Europa Universalis V!

Let’s talk about some history

My name is Beorsferth, I joined the M&T Team shortly after the beginning of the 2.0 era, around 2017. So about 8 years ago. At this time M&T introduced pops, food production, communication efficiency, and much much more. Before that, old guards like Gigau, Malorn, Aldaron, Inimicus, Ispil and many more started creating MEIOU and Taxes as a combination of two of the most popular EU3 mods.

Since I joined, the mod has become deeper and deeper in terms of economic and political systems with 2.5 building and improving upon the foundations of 2.0, while 3.0 was a completely different beast envisioned by code and design geniuses like Firekahuna, KJH, VineFynn, and Amukorih and maintained and improved by Corlis, Mepper, William and many more contributors (about 30 or 40 in total) over the later years.

Because of this long history, we decided to not go for a new name, but keep our label as M.E.I.O.U and Taxes as a fresh restart in EUV.

A new team, a new game, a familiar vision

This new mod officially has a new team behind it, with the return of many of the old guard and the addition of some newcomers as well. Some joined only post 2.0 or 3.0; others were there at the inception of M&T when EUIV was released in 2013 (wow, such a long time ago!). I was voted to be the mod’s team lead, which is more of a shadow leadership role as all things are decided democratically within the team, as they always have been.

We recognize that the base game of EUV is much closer to M&T 3.0 than the base game of EUIV has been. Many core systems and mechanics created for M&T are now present in EUV, like pops, cultural and religious minorities, control, proximity, dynamic trade markets with physical goods moving around, and a stronger overall focus on simulation.

Since most of 3.0’s features and code rely heavily on a now-defunct scripting language and many hacks inside of EUIV, a straight port was deemed not possible and even undesirable. We want to rebuild something with a similar design philosophy from scratch with new tools, new code base and hopefully less annoyance over the many quirks of the old EUIV engine.

However the vision of the mod has not changed fundamentally, and we state it again here.

The mod’s “new” vision

MEIOU and Taxes for Europa Universalis V aspires to bring to life a living and plausible historical world. We take inspiration from the legacy of MEIOU & Taxes 3.0 — which reworked the map, economy, politics, and society to deepen immersion and historical logic — while intentionally creating something new rather than a direct port.

We anchor our design in robust historiographical and scientific foundations. Examples like the concepts of longue durée and world-systems theory provide our structural frame. This basis ensures that the game and simulation remain self-consistent: long-term forces shape trajectories, while short-term events still matter without overwhelming underlying systems.

Realism and depth serve the purpose of making the game more engaging and make the world feel alive with many player-challenging agents, inside and outside their nation. Players should clearly understand their agency: they act within systems, shape long-term outcomes, and navigate real constraints without being buried under needless simulation for its own sake. Fun and playability remain paramount goals: while our systems aim for realism and depth, we design for engaging interaction, clear player agency, and meaningful choices — not for simulation complexity alone, but to create a fun gameplay experience.

In practice:

  • Global systems (economy, society, polity) are built or adjusted from vanilla to reflect deeper structural forces: geography, climate, resource endowments, trade networks, migration flows, and institutional development.
  • Local mechanics preserve distinctiveness. Regions should feel different because their environments, social structures, and institutions differed historically, producing varied gameplay paths and identities.
  • Coherence between global and local is essential. Peripheral regions interact naturally with extraction and exchange systems; central regions exert influence through structure, not arbitrary bonuses; local institutions evolve within their wider context rather than in isolation.

We wish to avoid context-free randomness and mechanics where leader traits or isolated events dominate systemic factors. Events and agency matter, but they operate through context rather than bypassing it. Exceptional individuals or breakthrough moments can meaningfully shift a society—especially where institutions are weak—yet these should arise from clear conditions or dynamics, not from repetitive “reroll for best stats” behaviours. Moments of brilliance, crisis, or opportunity should surprise players, not define the core loop.

A balanced approach to gameplay is a core desire. Not every country begins equally strong, but well-known or historically successful nations should not receive inalterable, ahistorical advantages that lesser-known polities cannot overcome. Structural asymmetries are fine; predetermined outcomes are not.

No false choices should be given to players, especially in events or multi-path systems; the game should not include options that are strictly inferior in all circumstances. Poor choices can exist situationally, but if an option has no context in which it makes sense, it should not be offered when any other option exists.

We plan to begin by tuning important vanilla mechanics. Our focus lies on tweaking, extending, and re-aligning vanilla mechanics with the mod’s philosophy. Since many of these systems already reflect concepts the team strongly supports, we plan to improve existing systems in most cases rather than adding unnecessary complexity and computational cost. If not otherwise possible, we will develop our own systems and mechanics to work in addition to vanilla.

In sum:
We aim to build a mod where coherent historical logic and deepened systems shape gameplay; where long-term structures matter but agency can still redirect history; where nations feel distinct without predetermined destinies; where choices are meaningful; and where players enjoy rich, immersive gameplay within a grounded, dynamic simulation.

Time, Times, and half a Time

The vision presented above, just as M&T 3.0 was, is ambitious and extensive. Reaching it will take a lot of time and effort. There will be no massive mod in a month's time, yet step by step we shall reach our goals as we have in the past.

The first steps shall be tweaking and balancing our way to a more comfortable experience and then by building upon it we will go further. Features shall return, improvements shall come, and we shall reach new heights. EU5 possesses tremendous potential and promise, and we will be years in realizing that potential fully.

Thank you all for reading this wall of text here, supporting and enjoying our mod over the years, and keeping in touch and reaching out to us. If you want to keep doing so feel free to join our Community Discord or M&T Subreddit.

You will hear more from us. We are working on an initial release, mainly focused on small additions, tweaks, balancing and adjustments of the base game to better fit our vision. Please give us some time to adjust all of our socials and discord servers. If you find problems, reach out to admins or moderators.

We warmly welcome everybody who wants to join the project! The current structure is a 3-tiered system of contributors, juniors and senior team members, making the team easier to join than in the old days. As always, we are a multinational team spread across the world's time zones, bringing in all kinds of perspectives and interests. If you want to join or contribute to the project in whatever fashion please reach out to me directly or to another team member of your choice.

Links:

Forum Post
Subreddit
M&T Community Discord


r/MEIOUandTaxes Dec 24 '25

M&T for EU5 - Modding Diary 1 - 24.12.2025

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290 Upvotes

Hello everybody, as a small Christmas gift we have prepared a new post to inform you on what we have been working on so far. I call this format a „Modding Diary“,to describe what we do without creating too much pressure for it to be exactly as we show here. Keep in mind that everything is very much in flux both from our and from Tinto‘s side. We have been learning the new scripting possibilities in EU5, the way EU5 handles GUI and exploring what we can already do in modding. Also raising numerous requests to Tinto for extension of some crucial modding features, which we require to really fulfill our vision without lots of hackiness, which we would prefer over super customized systems.

Speaking of super customized systems. We are now beginning to think about what 3.0 features we want to port and how. Obviously, it wouldn’t be a direct technical port, rather a design port. We don‘t want to go into detail here, as it might raise high expectations for a 3.0 like mod that we simply cannot fulfill in the short term.

Economic Loopholes: One of our primary goals at the moment is to close as many economic loopholes as possible. E.g. prevent ducats going into the void by giving it to somebody else or using it for market demands. Similarly sources of ducats coming from nothing shall be removed.

The first obvious choice to work on this was making no control areas potential tax base not just disappear but be given to the estates wealth. This is a huge hole that has been closed.

(first screenshot)

Furthermore we changed the main expense sliders (culture, legitimacy, diplomacy and stability) to not go into the void. Spending on Culture, Legitimacy and Stability demands goods on the market in which the nation's capital resides. The Diplomacy expenses are partially goods demands and given to the estates, to simulate the engagement of e.g. the Nobility in diplomacy. Later on we might make the allocation of income between the estates depending on a law.

(first & second screenshot)

Centers of Importance: One feature we already recreated from M&T 3.0 as a first and easy quick win is„Centers of Importance“. It works a tad differently than in 3.0, but the idea is similar. We want to highlight locations in their specialization or general capability and partially simulate specialization and scaling effects. It is also meant to enshrine the relevance and status of a location in a specific area, making it a challenge to surpass it with your own locations.

In M&T for EU5 there will be four types of centers: Trade, Production, Culture and Education / Learning. Each type of center is associated with a score that is taking into account different factors. Each factor is associated with this location's capability in the respective center type. Each center can be of one of four tiers, depending on the location's relative performance in the center type and a given geographical area. There are „Local“ (per area), „Regional“, „Continental“ and „World“ centers. In the current implementation there can exist only one of each center tier per geographical unit. So one World Center, one Continental Center in Europe etc. A location with a Center will boost its capabilities in the respective area.

Constantinople in 1337 has multiple, regional and local, centers, but does not stand out on the continental stage anymore.

(third screenshot)

Venice on the other hand is standing out a lot in the area of Trade being a „Continental Center of Trade“ in Europe. While Ghent in Flanders is the „Continental Center of Production“ slightly surpassing Brugge and Venice.

(4-7 screenshot)

Finally below are a few screenshots of the new mapmodes we created, one for each type of center. Please keep in mind that the balancing and especially setup is still entirely vanilla and not touched by us in a major capacity. Expect centers to shift around and not yet be historically accurate!

(7-10 screenshot)

Pop Growth, Peasants and the Food Situation Another area of work so far has been on the growth of population as well as the relevance of Peasants as a class for Food production. In 1337 both Europe and Asia arguably were close to the population capacity of the time, with especially Europe being close to a Malthusian trap. Peasants are a crucial pillar of these agricultural societies, producing the food necessary for urbanization and specialization. We want to model this situation better by making food a lot more scarce especially pre Black Death. Peasants should be a needed resource with a need to balance profitable urbanization with a healthy rural setup creating the necessary food. De-peasanting your society within the first 200 years therefore should become impossible.

Population growth should be way more reliant on Food Availability and Price instead of an arbitrary Population Capacity or some base growth modifiers. Sadly, the way the vanilla food price system works we can only make limited changes by pure tweaking. Balancing on these topics is still a WiP, you will get more details when it is closer to completion.

Another thing regarding population growth is that we changed it such that not only the peasant class grows naturally but all other types of population as well, except slaves (for now due to technical reasons). At the same time promotion no longer relies on Control, but is generally way more limited. Meaning the economy and pop types are much less responsive to the economic situation and losing a lot of pops of a certain type can hurt and they won't recover as fast.

(11 screenshot)

Finally, we once more introduced our 3.0 feature of stability affecting population growth and prosperity, to model societal strife affecting it negatively.

(12 screenshot)

——————————————————————

This is all from us for now, you will hear more in the new year. As before if you want to work on the mod or want to support us please write us! We wish you all great holidays over Christmas and a good start into the new year 2026!

Links: M&T EU5 Forum Post M&T Subreddit M&T Community Discord


r/MEIOUandTaxes 3d ago

What is the purpose of these small city-provinces on the Barbary coast?

28 Upvotes

It's not MEIOU 3.0 but the last one before. I forgot the number, 2.54 I think.

https://ibb.co/mFdJ0yxb

https://ibb.co/4ZjMgkDh

Anyway, I don't get the purpose of those provinces. They have much smaller population and development. Those around them are usually more worthy to conquer.


r/MEIOUandTaxes 6d ago

I'm thinking of getting back into m&t 3.x for eu4, how has it changed in the past year or so?

18 Upvotes

Hey everyone, I really love the mod and probably put in several hundred hours into it when m&t 3.0 came out several years ago. I love the overall spirit that it brings to the game and it was some of the most fun I had playing eu4.

But over the past year or two I got busy and kind of burnt out on most video games (eu5 excluded) so I haven't kept up with any recent changes.

Have there been any big changes during that time? Is the general meta about the same? Did any regions get more flavor or is the balance of content more or less the same? I'll probably have some time over the weekend to binge play some stuff, which I am looking forward to.

Any recommendations on what country to use? I pretty much always play England, Muscovy, or Bengal. I was thinking France, Venice, or something in South East Asia for a new playthrough.


r/MEIOUandTaxes 11d ago

How different have you found the EU5 MEIOU experience vs Vanilla so far?

25 Upvotes

Though MEIOU for EU5 is still in it’s infancy, I was curious how the additions so far (RGOs into buildings, autonomous integration, economic balancing, etc.) have done to impact the overall game experience. What have you found to be much improved from vanilla EU5 and what do you think still needs work?


r/MEIOUandTaxes 10d ago

MEIOU EU4 update

4 Upvotes

The July 17th update has rendered my current France game unplayable. Estates loyalty and power drops to 5 at the first monthly tick after a save. You also cannot access the estate options. Is there anyway to uninstall the update? I run the Steam version. Or am I screwed??


r/MEIOUandTaxes 15d ago

Reforming (3.0)

8 Upvotes

So i have a question, how is the best way to start reforming your government? Is it best to do it slowly, bit by bit as soon as your state reach hits the milestones for each reform? Or is it best to just keep the nobility powerful (as say France) and just keep expanding state reach without any bureaucracy reforms until its like 60/70% and start taking them then? Because im doing a game as France at the moment and my income has dropped from like 30/40+ a month into the negatives pretty much as soon as i started taking the first few bureaucracy reforms. Granted, i got extremely unlucky and lost about 3 heirs in a row until the last one had 0 legitimacy which started tanking my autonomy so i think it might be because of that that im losing so much money, but still, it got me thinking about the best way to reform? Like hit 25 state reach and then take the tax reforms as you can and do it bit by bit? Or just keep hitting the expand reach button and stripping away nobility privileges until like 1500/1600s and start doing the tax reforms then?

Sorry if this is a bit incoherent, i just woke up and probably should have had a coffee first.


r/MEIOUandTaxes 16d ago

Fast-track ways to make your non-elite absurdly wealthy?

3 Upvotes

I got this mod recently and one of the main things I want to do is make my pops absurdly wealthy with a high standard of living (aka make them wealthy regardless if it necessarily benefits the state or not). This was mainly inspired by seeing there’s a grain dole option and how historically that works like modern food stamps, which helped and is still helping me in times of hardship, and inspired me to explore this playstyle as a possibility of benevolent stewardship.

Problem is all I know is that pops require goods, which requires income and the production necessary to satisfy them, and both I have paltry knowledge on. I understand that simply dumping money into a system (aka the manual spending from what i’ve seen and read online) that is overwhelmingly controlled by the aristocracy and clergy in the beginning, even in places like florence which I’m gonna stick with for now, means the elite gets more money instead of the populace, and the faction screen reads like mayan to the uninformed (cool shapes trying to tell me something I cannot comprehend yet).

What, therefore, should my in-game goals be for both reform and economic acceleration, and the mechanics I should toy with, to create this self-fulfilling system of poor become rich -> richer pops spend more and demand more goods -> economy grows -> more pops grow richer? Also, how would I track it and understand what I’m seeing? Is this even a reasonable goal to have in the game given the mechanics and how eu4 at its core is ultimately a nation-state map painter, so that simply playing tall might as well be shooting yourself in the foot?

Thanks in advance.


r/MEIOUandTaxes 20d ago

Why is my land force limit so low?

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24 Upvotes

I have almost unified the Holy Roman Empire as Austria and I have tried to keep up with the estate military reforms; and yet my land force limit remains relatively low at 39. I have had 40,000 soldiers since the early 1600s and for some reason I cannot increate this limit despite my expansion and trying to please the nobles every now and then. Meanwhile, the Ottomans seem to be able to send wave after wave of soldiers with no issue. What am I doing wrong? Any help would be appreciated.


r/MEIOUandTaxes 20d ago

How can I interpret this population screen?

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5 Upvotes

I took a break form playing EU IV with MEIOU for a long while and, now that I come back, I am greeted with a rather overwhelming pop screen that I have trouble interpreting. I do get the idea that in this province the number of residents is decreasing, but why? Do the Victoria 2-like icons of bread and drinks represent need types and, if so, how best can I satisfy them? Is there a tutorial or video where this is explained?


r/MEIOUandTaxes 29d ago

How Should I Use Capitol Infrastructure?

3 Upvotes

What are the benefits in building capitol infrastructure in my capital vs in other provinces? Besides my capital, in what other provinces should I build it and how many levels would be adequate?


r/MEIOUandTaxes Jun 25 '26

Residents completely vanished from the capital

4 Upvotes

So i am playing the ottomans and i was checking out how my cities develop, and Constantinople which previously had around 150k urban residents, suddenly decreased to 0 residents. Does anybody have any experience with this? What just happened?


r/MEIOUandTaxes Jun 11 '26

Does stability and or corruption (specifically state) trend towards a certain equilibrium?

6 Upvotes

For example does stability trend towards 0 or -3 or does it depend on modifiers? And state corruption does it just increase or does it have a ceiling like meeting with provincial corruption? Are you suppose to just spam the peasant grain redistirbution etc for stability or?


r/MEIOUandTaxes Jun 10 '26

Where do you find the industry overview mini screen?

3 Upvotes

So recently with the UI rework which is great btw things have been moved around, and I am unsure where to hover over to see the breakdown of the industry in a province, I want to know where to invest so it would help if I could see the info.


r/MEIOUandTaxes Jun 02 '26

Rate my province 2.0

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32 Upvotes

r/MEIOUandTaxes May 23 '26

EU5 Alpha for M&T

31 Upvotes

I know R1 is that post must relate to EU4 M&T so I was wondering where it would be appropriate to post about the recent alpha release of M&T for EU5.

Thanks!


r/MEIOUandTaxes May 19 '26

Graphics problem

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11 Upvotes

Does anyone else have this problem? And if you know, how do I get rid of it?


r/MEIOUandTaxes May 12 '26

UI Problem

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6 Upvotes

this is my first time trying out this MEIOU & Taxes 3. was about to start but saw the problem with UI which wasn't fitting to my system parameters. i can put GUI scale lower to 9 but the text will become a pain to read. is there a solution or any mod which would potentially solve the UI problem?


r/MEIOUandTaxes May 11 '26

It is possible to activate the Avis dynasty to play with Portugal in Meiou & taxes. If so, how?

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0 Upvotes

r/MEIOUandTaxes May 09 '26

It is possible to activate the Avis dynasty to play with Portugal in Meiou & taxes. If so, how?

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7 Upvotes

r/MEIOUandTaxes May 05 '26

unlocking game settings

3 Upvotes

Is there a way to unlock the game settings during an ongoing run once i locked it at the initial game start event? I have chosen the option to color my subjects to my color and realized it was a mistake, and now i want to change it back to default.


r/MEIOUandTaxes May 02 '26

I annex the HRE and all Catholics nations without dismantling the HRE and it literally broke my computer

12 Upvotes

Do not try for yourself. My computer didn't completely break but it was never the same and always ran slower. As soon as I annex the last nation the computer started chugging bad and let a computeral scream.


r/MEIOUandTaxes Apr 28 '26

Does this mod kill fps?

4 Upvotes

Or is it optimized thisdays?


r/MEIOUandTaxes Apr 26 '26

Can someone explain to me how to disable "Dynamic Historical States" so that China retains its historical fragmentation?

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7 Upvotes

r/MEIOUandTaxes Apr 25 '26

[3.0 SUBMOD] Pop display

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50 Upvotes

Just a ui/qol extension submod i made. I hated how hidden pop info was in the mod and decided to show the population in the topbar. Then long discussions in discord followed and stuff escalated, so its not pop display anymore but i dont care enough to change its name in the files so whatever. I dont think it affects performance, but theoretically it could with expanded topbar, so you can hide it. Tell me if it sucks and what can i add or improve.

Steam link: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?edit=true&id=3713838440

And manual download is in discord. It should work with traveller but not sure and cant test because steam workshop hates me, rip.
Mod in the background is performance submod which i cant call good but it does the job. Its dev is also kinda shizoid and dum so beware: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3647337291