EU V has been officially announced. It wasn't really a secret since they've been openly releasing dev diaries for what could only be a new EU for some time, but now it's out there and a few good boy streamers have gotten to make carefully curated videos of the early alpha gameplay.

I'm a bit conflicted about it. On the one hand it does seem like they're fixing fundamental issues with IV with things like pops and better trade, but on the other it looks like they've taken cues from CK3 and Vicky 3 with the UI and warfare. It also stands to be seen how much content they're going to lock off to fund the next 15 years of DLC. Obviously no one should ever give Paradox money, but I want to believe this will be the first one in a while that gets more than 50 hours out of me.