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EU4 - Development Diary - 11th of June 2019

Welcome once again to the weekly EU4 development diary. I’m neondt, and today I’ll be talking about the French and Provençal mission trees, before handing you over to @Ofaloaf who will have more than a few words to say about the Dutch. I’ll also show you a few new government reforms just for fun.

I’ll start by addressing the elephant in the room: where’s Burgundy? We do indeed have a mission tree for Burgundy, but it is not yet time to reveal it. The Burgundian mission tree is tied to features yet unannounced and to reworks of certain significant events that we are not yet ready to talk about. The same is true of the Pope in Italy, and to a lesser extent some of the German nations. We’ll come back to this once we’ve started to talk about some of the mechanical changes and features coming in the European expansion.

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The French mission tree now stands as one of the most extensive in the game. When we re-worked the mission system during the development of Rule Britannia, France was one of the winners as our policy was to adapt as many old missions as possible to the new system and France happened to have rather a lot of those. The European expansion will go even further, adding 25 more missions for France.

For the sake of brevity we’ll focus only on what’s new rather than covering content you’re likely well familiar with already. Early on in the new tree are missions to develop two crucially important naval bases, neither of which begin in French hands in 1444. These are Brest, in Brittany, and Toulon, in Provence. Each will serve a slightly different purpose. Toulon’s dockyard mission will add a permanent modifier to the province giving Navy Tradition, as well as reducing ship cost and repair time in the province, making it an ideal base for your Meditterainean operations. Establishing the Brest dockyards meanwhile will reward you with an early Drydock building in the province, as well as 5 heavy ships for your fleet, which will be helpful for the proceeding missions which focus on defeating the English. To that end, the first step is to strengthen the Auld Alliance - you must ensure that a friendly nation in the British Isles (doesn’t have to be Scotland but it’s the most likely candidate) has at least 70 development. Completing this mission rewards claims on only those parts of the British Isles owned by England or Great Britain, with the goal of the Defeat the English mission simple being to reduce their power and drive them out of London. With the English defeated, France will truly rule the waves and you’ll have 10% more Naval Morale for the rest of the game.

France also has a shiny new set of missions that deal with its internal situation. Beginning as a feudal state ruled largely by regional nobles, France must move towards centralization in all of its forms. Breaking the power of the nobility is only the first step. Next you must impose religious unity through the institution of the Dragonnades, a set of policies designed to expel heresy from the nation. But it is not enough to rule the state - you must become the state. Crushing all notions of regional autonomy and bringing stability to the nation will enable the L’Etat c’est moi modifier, replacing the old decision of the same name. Also replacing an old decision, Versailles Palace will provide you with a significant prestige boost, some development in Paris, and fire the Commissioning of Versailles event. Next comes the Revolution. Embrace the Revolution or crush it, the choice is yours. Regardless, this will be a turning point for France and will lead you towards establishing a buffer of Client States and ultimately proclaiming French Hegemony over Europe. Moving back up the tree, France must also Establish the Musketeers, possible only under a highly skilled military ruler and fires the reworked and improved Royal Musketeers event. With a disciplined elite regiment of musketeers, you’ll need a place for them to recover from their injuries so that they can return to active service as quickly as possible, and so just must construct Les Invalides. You must have a high land forcelimit, a university in Paris, and at least 20 provinces with a military building. The reward is something I shamelessly stole from @Ofaloaf ‘s Venetian missions - an effect that reduces the likelihood of negative events about ill-health. In addition your manpower recovery rate will be improved by 10% for the rest of the game.

Several additional conquest missions appear throughout the tree. Following the Annex Alsace mission, you’ll be on the path to recreating Napoleon’s campaigns. Invading Switzerland, abolishing the Holy Roman Empire, “protecting” Poland and ultimately attempting an invasion of Russia will be on the to-do list. A successful siege of Moscow will fire the new Fire of Moscow event, bringing utter ruin and devastation to the city. Enforcing the French Claim to Naples will give you a claim on the Spanish crown, allowing you to start a war for the Spanish Succession.

Finally we’ve added new colonial missions for France. France will now be tasked with expanding in South America, establishing the France Antarctique colony. The missions will also follow historical French activities in North America and their struggle to dominate the fur trade through establishing relationships with the native peoples. These missions culminate in a mission to bring liberty, equality, and fraternity to the oppressed colonies of your rivals, supporting American Independence. If you successfully liberate one of these colonies, you’ll be rewarded with permanent access to the Liberation CB. France will also be incentivized to sail eastward. Indian Dominance tasks you with expelling all other European powers from India in the Age of Revolutions (granting cheaper Trade Company Investments), while French Indochina aims at the early conquest of Vietnam.

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Good King René was a man with a lot of titles. Or at least a man who believed he had a lot of titles. Certainly he ruled as Count of Provence and Duke of Anjou, and Duke of Lorraine through his marriage to Duchess Isabella. Only a couple of years before our start date he ruled as King of Naples before being ousted by the Aragonese. In addition to Naples, René also claimed to be the rightful ruler of Sicily, Aragon, and Jerusalem, and professed through his coat of arms a connection to Hungary.

The Provençal mission tree will task you with making these bold pretensions a political reality. René must begin by finding some way for his claims to be taken seriously, and this can be achieved either by conquering Corsica or reaching 100 total development (Provence begins with 73 in the current iteration of the map). This will grant you cores on Naples. You heard right, that’s cores on Naples, rather than permanent claims. This is a rare case where we feel it makes sense to grant cores as a mission reward, as René lost Naples so close to the start of the game. Retaking Naples will be quite a challenge, but should you succeed the world will recognize you as a King, improving your government rank. You’ll also get permanent claims or Union CB’s (as appropriate to how the political situation has developed) on your rightful possessions in Aragon and Sicily. These campaigns again will be no easy feat, as you’ll likely have to battle the Iberians quite extensively on both land and sea. Accomplishing this task will not be the end of your struggles however. You’ll then be tasked with pursuing the more outrageous claims of the House of Anjou - the Kingdoms of Hungary and Jerusalem. Taking up the mantle of the Crusades will likely put you on a collision course with the mighty Ottomans, while claiming to be the King of Hungary is unlikely to sit well with the Habsburgs. Besides being an opportunity to snag the Good King René achievement, being King of Jerusalem will present some new in-game opportunities which we’ll talk about another time.

Provence also has many somewhat more local and immediate concerns besides the (re)conquest of René’s birthright. Uniting Provence with Lorraine is critical, as is establishing a relationship with the Holy Roman Empire. Joining the Empire, despite its name, need not involve Provence being a member state - becoming the Emperor or abolishing the HRE will also suffice. The status of Avignon is also a concern. Once the seat of the Avignon Papacy, it is no longer quite so vital to the Holy See. It may be possible to convince the Pope to part with the city with some careful diplomacy, or failing that a good old fashioned siege will also do the job. With Avignon integrated into Provence, the logical next step is of course the conquest of all Occitania, and from there the conquest of France itself. The King of Kings mission closes much of the mission tree, requiring in addition 1000 total development. It grants not only the Empire government rank but also a permanent boost to your Legitimacy and a 20% reduction to the cost of Diplomatic Annexation, useful for integrating all of the Personal Unions you’ve likely accumulated along the way.

Good King René was more than a holder of unrecognized titles. He was also a great patron of the arts, sponsoring the Renaissance and patronizing the Church. Completing the Sponsor the arts mission will reward you with the means to Develop Provence, which requires Aix to have at least 30 development and all other provinces in the state to have at least 15. The next priority will be the establishment of the aforementioned naval base at Toulon. Although it is the French national anthem, La Marseillaise was originally a marching song of the Marseille National Guard. This mission requires 80% Army Professionalism, and on completion reward a permanent 25% boost to your Drill gain and decay.

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Hey again, @Ofaloaf in the saddle again and it's time to talk about our good pals, the Dutch. EU4's timeframe saw the Low Countries go from a disparate collection of feudal vassals and small duchies into one of the preeminent powers of Europe and, dare I say it, the world. Distilling this rich history into a mission tree, needless to say, has been a heck of a challenge.

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Dutch missions are shared between the Netherlands proper and the Dutch minors that are present in the game in 1444. All of the missions except for the two rightmost mission chains are available to the minors, although the available missions should naturally prod a minor to eventually reach the conditions to form the Netherlands anyways. Their missions are largely concerned with three themes: protecting the Low Countries, getting rich, and going places to get even more rich.

A lot of the early missions are concerned securing and protecting the state's independence; 'Assert Our Sovereignty' straight-up requires the country to be independent and own four provinces, which means if you're playing as one of Burgundy's vassals you'll want to backstab that big wine-colored blob at the first opportunity. 'Sea Beggars', meanwhile, encourages you to build up a respectable fleet of light ships, useful for both harassing your naval enemies in a pinch and hogging all the power in trade nodes.

As the country develops, the scope of its economic interests should gradually push it to look beyond Europe for greater trade opportunities. It starts off humbly enough; historically, the Netherlands began trading in Baltic grain decades before it ever really started investing in transatlantic and East Indies ventures. From its initial forays in the Baltic, however, the Dutch began to rapidly expand, challenging Iberian commercial monopolies by sending their own merchants to places previously visited only by the Spanish and Portuguese.

Soon, two significant trading companies were chartered, the Dutch East India Company (or Vereenigde Oostindische Compangie, known also as the VOC) and the West India Company (Westindische Compangie, WIC, sometimes known with a 'Chartered'/Geoctroyeerde slapped to the front of its name as well). The VOC founded colonies from South Africa to the East Indies, and even briefly had a foothold in Taiwan. The WIC tried to emulate the VOC's wealth and extent in the Americas, but its New Netherlands colony was eventually taken by the British and its main port, New Amsterdam, became the obscure town of New York City, and its attempt to seize Brazil from Portugal floundered. I trust that you can do better than that.

Lastly, the Netherlands has two mission chains solely for it, starting with 'Strengthen the Vroedschappen' and 'Merge the Stadtholders'. Both these chains play into the Dutch Republic government's mechanics and the struggle between the Orangists (big fans of the House of Orange) and the Statists (big fans of being a republic where they get the money and the glory), because all the missions in those chains affect the Orangist-Statist balance of power. None of them require a certain level of Orangist or Statist control, but, for example, if you manage to pull off a Glorious Revolution where the Prince of Orange successfully subjugates Britain, oh man you bet the Orangists would enjoy a boost to their popularity and influence. Any swing from completing a mission can be mitigated with an election or by completing Orangist and Statist missions at the same time, or you can just let politics fluctuate as the fortunes of the Orangists and Statists ebb and flow.

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And now back to me for one last thing. We heard you liked interesting new government reforms, and I even heard a few pleas for “stable dictatorships”. Displayed below are three new government forms that are exactly that:

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[As always, all numbers are WIP and may not represent final values at release]

Protectorate Parliament is a unique government reform available to England only if they choose to side with the Parliamentarians during the English Civil War. It represents the ‘Rump Parliament’ of Lord Protector Cromwell and his successors. The Protectorate Parliament is a tier 1 government reform (and legacy government) that does not have elections, but uses the Parliament mechanics and has a higher absolutism cap than other republics.

The Junker Stratocracy is unique to Prussia, serving as a republican equivalent to the Prussian Monarchy reform. Stratocracy enables the Militarization mechanic, has a very high absolutism cap, and grants passive Militarization gain. Most importantly, rulers are not decided by either elections or by birth. When the ruler of a Stratocracy dies, they are succeeded by the nations’ best General, who will become the new Field Marshal. The Field Marshals’ stats are based on the number of pips they had as a General, much like the Pirate Kings of Golden Century.

Speaking of Pirate Kings, the Board of Admirals reform allows non-pirate republics to abandon any semblance of democracy and give total political power to the Navy, with the Lord High Admiral serving as head of state and new rulers being raised from the ranks of your Admirals. Enacting this reform will require you to complete Naval ideas.

All of these reforms are far from the ideals of republicanism, and so will have a reduced base republican tradition gain.

That’s all from this rather wordy dev diary! Next week I hope you’ll join us for the last in our series of map dev diaries, this time focusing on Austria and the Balkans.
 
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Huh? other languages have standardized and (mostly) consistent spelling, while still retaining dialects... (mass media like TV is a way heavier force driving back dialects)
Then I have no idea what your point is.
And quite frankly we've gotten far from the topic that was in of itself far from the original topic. I would suggest we end this discussion here. It has been a pleasure debating with you.

Ah... Who would have thunk that the patch that brings anything new to the Low Countries, which I have been waiting for about four-ish years (A fucking map update in the England patch doesn't count Timmy!) would cause a flame war between the Dutch and the Flemish. Look guys, are you seriously suggesting that Paradox should model the exploitation (perceived or real, I'm not so good with the post-Napoleon/Victorian era history) that cover which may or may not have happened during the last six years of the EU4 time period. One of the main contributing reasons why Flanders and specifically Antwerpen got overshadowed by Amsterdam during the period was that the Austrians couldn't give a fucking flying fuck about the whole colonial game, which is the main contributing reason for the latter's growth.
For a constructive critique, do you suggest that the Flemish should get and alternative mission tree where the seat of power stays in Antwerpen with all the other bells and whistles of the Dutch Republic goverment if they form the Groter Vlaanderen? With coding all the appropriate events to match the nation that is in power? That's a bit much in my opinion to satisfy a nationalistic urge that didn't exist during the time period in question. Heck the concept of nationalities wasn't as huge of a concept as it is during our time back then. At the start of 1444 it was just mostly kings, dukes and princes lording over the people of Christendom. Christendom was the unifying concept of Europe until the reformation broke it, nationality was far, far the fifth or sixth most important concept.
Speaking as a person of a nationality that was happily ruled by an aristrocracy that didn't speak my language for seven hundred years and we didn't complain at all, we had a rebellion that didn't even take traction, literally lasted for barely two months. Our concept of nationality started when some bloke named Bonaparte told this Alexander fella to take us, cause our overlords didn't agree to his blockade of England. Alexander was cool but his successors were not, who proceeded to attempt (to quote an ancient forum meme) how do I commit cultural genocide? that's what birthed our concept of nationalism. In the Low Countries case, it was basically one and a half centuries of saying different prayers that made the difference.

tl;dr Eat your content update and stop complaining about nationalism. PDX ain't gonna model every hypothetical scenario in the game.
Like I said I really don't think flemish need a separate tree, just a dynamic handling of any mission which pertains to holland to simply be the capital area.
 
I personally think this DLC is the best ever! Just the mission trees will still be kinda worth it

As a mission modder, I have to disagree, I don't think that the mission trees alone are worth the price of an immersion pack (Don't get me wrong, the mission trees shown in the dev diaries are pretty nice). The thing that will define the DLC are going to be the mechanics introduced in my personal opinion.
 
I’ll start by addressing the elephant in the room: where’s Burgundy? We do indeed have a mission tree for Burgundy, but it is not yet time to reveal it. The Burgundian mission tree is tied to features yet unannounced and to reworks of certain significant events that we are not yet ready to talk about. The same is true of the Pope in Italy, and to a lesser extent some of the German nations. We’ll come back to this once we’ve started to talk about some of the mechanical changes and features coming in the European expansion.

Is there any rework of the Burgundian inheritance planned?

Take a guess :D

Based on the phrasing of "same is true of the Pope in Italy, and to a lesser extent some of the German nations" and considering how mercenary-focused Burgundian National Ideas currently, I'm going to guess that new mercenary mechanics are tied in with the Burgundian mission tree (with the Swiss Guard for the Pope, Hessian mercenaries being known historically, etc.).
 
Is there any rework of the Burgundian inheritance planned?
They pretty obviously hinted at that, so I would say definitely.
 
As a mission modder, I have to disagree, I don't think that the mission trees alone are worth the price of an immersion pack (Don't get me wrong, the mission trees shown in the dev diaries are pretty nice). The thing that will define the DLC are going to be the mechanics introduced in my personal opinion.
Piling up ever greater bloat of mechanics is the last thing the game needs. What they actually need is to cut mechanics, rationalize remove and make thing effective and intuitive. Not just add more buttons to press.
 
I'll give the benefit of the doubt there. Because I've said it myself as well. One of the things teased for this upcoming DLC is a Catholicism rework (and I think it can be easily shown that Catholicism is weak, can't resist the Reformation worth a damn right now, and as a player you have almost no incentive to resist said reformation unless your nation has like 4+ Bishops, which basically is only Spain, France, and England most of the time). And that Rework is likely going to be a good 90% of if I consider it worthwhile, as opposed to something like picking up Dharma or Art of War for myself.

And that would be mechanics introduced.
 
They are not published but I see no problem entertaining the question.
The bottom 5 starting from least played:
1. Bundelkhand, 5 development OPM vassal of Malwa
2. Mong Nai, 11 development tributary of Ava
3. Baghelkhand, 10 development vassal of Jaunpur
4. Hadiya, 12 development vassal of Ethopia
5. Keonhjar, 4 development vassal of Orissa

Request: please add these to Random Nation.
 
This looks great!
 
What about special government for France? First, a feudal government wich gives + diplomatic relations for vassals and, after the etat c'est moi, a new absolut government "ancien régime" (without this anacrony).

For those who complains about stronger countries with many things and minor countries with little, the fun of little coutries is the hard way
 
I really think the French mission tree needs to be re-examined, the "Annex Savoy" mission is far removed the actual historical situation in the Western Alps as several other people have pointed out. While, in 1536 France invaded and occupied Savoy for 23 years, France was not able to maintain control of Savoy, in part to the remarkable political gamesmanship of Duke Emmanuel Philibert, who slowly recovered his titular ducal territories from France and also moved the capital from Chambéry to Turin and began the process of Italianization of the duchy.

The linear advancement from Annexing Savoy and then moving on to the rest of Italian peninsula is also completely unnecessary, France had already been involved in several Italian wars already before annexing Savoy and would continue to pursue territory in Italy after Savoy was regained by the House of Savoy (including some wars where Savoy allied with France). While certainly France would have to deal with Savoy while pursuing her Italian ambitions, historically speaking, it wasn't so cut and dry like an in-game annexation. Rather than annexation perhaps something else could be used instead?
 
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Piling up ever greater bloat of mechanics is the last thing the game needs. What they actually need is to cut mechanics, rationalize remove and make thing effective and intuitive. Not just add more buttons to press.
That's what we call "EU5".
 
Judging by Imperator Rome, I'm not sure I want to see what an EU5 would look like...

It all depends on who's the director and how much influence Johan has if he's not. I respect Johan and congratulate him on many of his past works, but I do feel like his game design is a bit dated as we saw in Imperator. Mana points, realistically speaking, have no place in a historical grand strategy game, but because Europa Universalis is originally based off of a board game where mana points have to exist since it was turn based and you spend resources to advance instead of over the course of 5 years in-game working towards some new technology. If EUV were to be developed I would hope that Jake or someone else picks up the mantle and leads the creation of the game. If Johan has learned from Imperator that over indulging in mana is bad I would greatly appreciate his input on the development of EUV.
 
There is nothing wrong with mana, and listening to the mana-hating crowd is what will be the doom of that game.

I don't hate mana, I think a middle compromise can be made and be good. But I think Imperator went a little overboard, felt a little silly that I start the game and instantly could have multiple bonuses and techs unlocked. Anyway, this is a DD on EUIV and this thread has had wild discussions about Dutch/Flemish culture, English language and now moving into EUV, best this thread's discussion move back to thoughts and opinions on the content presented in this DD.
 
Will the "Conquer Provence' mission be rewritten to exclude the Avignon province as a requirement for completion?
Since it is situated so early in the Burgundy/Italy missions tree, seizing Avignon and angering the Pope might be inconvenient for a player planning to stay catholic. Plus (and the game shows it in the bookmarks), Avignon did not become part of France until the Revolution was well underway.
 
That's what we call "EU5".
They did it with HoI4 but eu4 did not cull the mechanics particularly hard hence why we have the issue we have now.
 
Just because I find it interesting, any possibility that at some point we can get like some stickied "EU4 Statistics" topic from the developers to get updated somewhat irregularly? Just would be interesting to have the perspective for when people talk about things like how popular nations are by picks, percentage of games running to 1821, number of world conquests completed, etc? Dunno how much it's set up for. Just think it'd be handy perspective to have when people kind of get into loggerheads about how easy/hard/common/rare certain things are.

I second this.

Not to mention giving you an idea of nations to choose. These 5 least played nations, being small and a subject, sounds like a challenge to play. Anyone want to accept this challenge? :p