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EU4 - Development Diary - 15th of October 2019

Good morning once again, and welcome to today’s dev diary. Following on from last week, I’ll be covering a couple more Imperial Incidents, this time focusing on our reworked Dutch Revolt and Shadow Kingdom.

Another reminder in case you’ve forgotten how Imperial Incidents work:

“The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity.

When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects.”

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Let’s start with the Dutch Revolt. You’ll be pleased to hear that this is no longer represented as a potentially endless series of events spawning hundreds of thousands of separatist rebels in your Lowlands provinces. We’ve instead opted to use the Disaster system to constrain the time-frame for when these rebellions crop up. Most conditions should be relatively familiar: don’t have any of the Lowland culture (now including Frisian!) as your primary culture, own at least 5 provinces in the Lowlands region with Dutch/Flemish/Frisian culture, don’t have your capital in the Lowlands region, etc.

We do however have a new set of conditions: there must also be some kind of existing cultural or religious tensions in your Low Countries provinces. In practice, this means owning Low Countries provinces that do not have your religion or have a culture that is not accepted in your nation.

When these conditions are true, the Dutch Revolt Disaster will begin ticking for your nation. When the Disaster fires a large number of rebels will spawn in some of your Low Countries provinces and of said provinces will get extra Unrest until the end of the Disaster. Events will give you the option of fighting additional rebels or granting high autonomy to your Lowlands provinces.

The Disaster ends when one of these sets of conditions is true:
  • The Disaster has been present in your country for 20 years, there are no rebels in your provinces, and you have at least 1 Stability
  • The Netherlands exists
  • You own less than 5 Dutch/Flemish/Frisian provinces in the Low Countries region

If at any point during the Disaster you own at least 5 provinces that are Dutch/Flemish/Frisian culture and either controlled by rebels or 90% autonomous, the Dutch Independence event fires and you’ll find yourself in a bloody war. Not only will the Netherlands be spawned from all appropriate provinces, but an Imperial Incident will begin and all of your rivals will be invited to support the new Dutch state in their quest for self-determination. These events will now directly call your rivals into the independence war rather than simply creating an alliance that is unlikely to be useful for the Netherlands during the initial war, which gives them much more of a fighting chance.

The Dutch Revolt Imperial Incident gives the Emperor a chance to intervene, assuming that the Dutch are not revolting against the Emperor and that the Netherlands are part of the HRE. The Emperor has three options:
  • If the Emperor chooses to support Dutch independence, they are called into the independence war (assuming that it is still ongoing), become an ally of the Netherlands, and get a significant opinion boost with the fledgling nation.

  • If the Emperor chooses not to intervene in the conflict, they lose some prestige and send a clear message that the Empire cares not for the Dutch cause. The Netherlands will leave the HRE after the independence war has concluded.

  • If the Emperor chooses to suppress the Dutch revolt, the Emperor will gain an alliance with the former overlords of the Dutch, and again the Netherlands will leave the Empire after the war is over.

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We’ve also taken another look at the Shadow Kingdom event chain that leads to Italy leaving the Holy Roman Empire. In the past this has set a challenge to the Emperor to force Italy into the Empire often through strange and obscure means. In the European update we’ve turned it on its head; you’ll now need to rein in the Italian Princes that are already in the Empire but who are slipping away from Imperial rule. The Emperor gets an event near the beginning of the game about this state of affairs and what must be done to avert a total loss of control in Italy.

An Italian state is considered “reined in” after it has lost a war (any war) against the Emperor or if it has very good relations with the Emperor. We’ll be displaying which nations are at risk of abandoning the Empire in the HRE interface.

Some time around the 1460’s, an Imperial Incident begins for the Emperor in which he has two options:
  • Continue attempting to rein in the Italians: this begins a timer for the Emperor to attempt to rein in as many Italian states as possible. The risk the Emperor takes here is that failing to hold to this promise will incur a greater penalty to Imperial Authority than simply abandoning Italy early on.

  • Abandon Italy: all of Italy will be removed from the Empire immediately at the cost of 20 [numbers subject to change] Imperial Authority and 10 Prestige.
If the Emperor attempts to keep Italy within the Empire, they’ll get a follow-up event after 20 years. Italian Princes that were in danger of leaving, if any remain, will leave the Empire and the Emperor will incur a penalty to Imperial Authority for each Prince that leaves.If the Emperor has succeeded in reining in every Italian state they’ll gain 25 Imperial Authority, the Italian Princes will remain in the Empire, and certain future Incidents will be unlocked or barred due to your actions.

That’s all for this week! As you can see the Imperial Incidents system has given us a great excuse to go back and revisit some of the game’s oldest and most impactful content, and what I’ve talked about today is far from all we’ve done in this regard. Have a good week, and for those of you attending PDXCON, I’ll see you there!
 
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What about "XXX joins the Republic" events? Will they be changed or will AI consider this possibility when winning war? Currently in most of my games Austria after winning war vs Netherlands doesn't take back its cores but just releases e.g. Holland and Utrecht, and they join the republic in a couple months, which makes this war pointless. Or maybe non-existing Dutch minors will finally lose their cores once the Netherlands appear?
 
I always thought that moving your capital to the lowlands region as Spain (or Austria) is "too easy" of a solution. To my knowledge, there is no penalty for doing this and it instantly disables the Dutch revolt, which seems quite unrealistic to me. For the tag that receives the Burgundian Inheritance, can we add a penalty for not having your capital in the core territory (i.e., Iberia for Spain, Austria for Austria etc.) or with primary culture? Then it wouldn't be a magical solution to stop the Dutch revolts.

Secondly—and this is a bit of pet peeve of mine—the situation of Dutch revolts against Spanish is quite similar to the phenomenon of Maratha revolts against Mughals. Can we also implement a similar disaster for that?
 
The Dutch incident sounds like it'll be a nice change. Hate having to avoid the area just because of the endless rebels.

Out of curiosity, is there any news on wether changes to custom nations ended up being within the scope of the update?
 
Yes Imperial Incidents are DLC locked, but in cases when we rework old stuff like the Dutch Revolt and Shadow Kingdom they'll still be available to people without the DLC by conventional means.

This again? Surely it would make more sense to put the game mechanic of Imperial Incidents into the patch but put all the actual new incidents into the DLC like Stellaris would? That way you don't have to make two versions every time you make a new Incident for a new DLC like the problem you now have with Government Reforms.

It seems like this is a problem that has been solved. Put the game system in the patch and the new content for that game system into the DLC. That way the DLC retains its value and you can add more incidents later on in future DLCs if it seems worthwhile. By putting game systems themselves into the DLCs you end up with 40918742 different game systems that aren't allowed to interact with each other and are unlikely to ever be revisited and revised. Or they will be but when they are, they'll be made baseline like what happened with Estates.

Like you realised that you had this problem with Estates and made them baseline, but then in the very same patch you added Government Reforms and made the same mistake again. Now every time you want to make a new unique government you have to do it twice.

I own every DLC (except Golden Century) and I'll likely buy every one you ever make for EU4 (provided you don't make one like GC again) so this isn't about wanting stuff for free. But if you're making new and interesting game systems then I want the possibility that they will have new stuff made for them in the future. I want the possibility that if you make some other new and cool game system in the future that could link into the ones you're making now that that will be possible.
 
Why the assumption that 100% of the time the Netherlands have a Catholic foreign overlord, while the Netherlands are Reformed/Protestant? It may very well be 1/3 of the time, because half the time the Lowlands do not have a Catholic foreign overlord, while the Lowlands are Reformed/Protestant.

Just for reference:
Burgundian Inheritance may not happen, leaving Netherlands divided between small states or united under Burgundy that accepts all Dutch cultures.
Burgundian Inheritance may happen but the inheritor may be tolerant.
Burgundian Inheritance may happen but the Lowlands may end up fragmented afterwards.
Burgundian Inheritance may happen but the Dutch may be let go by the inheritor.
Netherlands may form by other means.
Reformation may be very successful or very unsuccessful, resulting in no religion tensions in the region.
And obviously, that is 1/3 of the time that the Netherlands are successful. They may very well be unsuccessful if they are brought low by another power.

I fully agree. I should also mention that the formation of the Netherlands as it would come to be, was by no means some historical certainty.

While the years of Burgundian rule had created more unity and some centralization among the Seventeen Provinces it was still a cultural patchwork and there was no real 'national' sense of belonging. Also made clear by how the southern and northern Netherlands would end up having very divergent paths despite belonging to the same union and the Dutch revolt having its nexus in Flanders, Wallonia and Brabant.

Culturally provinces such as Limburg and Gelre had far more in common with Cologne, Cleves and Julich than with Flanders, Hainaut or Friesland. And vice versa Charles the Bold on a successful campaign in the Rhineland could have very well led to a Netherlands further down the line including those lands. Those lands also had more in common with much of the Netherlands than with say Austria or Bavaria.

Netherlands appearing in about 1/3 of the simulations seems about right. Netherlands falling apart into independent counties and duchies under the HRE is just as plausible. Or the Netherlands being the center of a Burgundy which is an Imperial Kingdom within the HRE, or an independent kingdom outside of the HRE and having it's own path of development.

For a formed Netherlands some more flexibility in its path would be nice. As a largely littoral state some sort of naval focus would be clear but historically it could have just as well become a monarchy with its capital in Brussels or Antwerp.
 
Is it possible for the empire to have it's own mission tree of sorts in addition to the reforms? Missions to do stuff such as break up France into the smaller duchies and add them to the HRE. Same with Italy, and parts of Eastern Europe. Another idea is to make missions to develop provinces either by development or buildings. For example, add the Balkan to the HRE and then build forts along the ottoman border. Or along the border with Russia / Spain.

The mission trees are a fun play experience and have a second mission tree as the emperor gives you a reason to care about being the emperor even if playing a country such as Brandenburg into Prussia.
 
Regarding Shadow Empire

1. There should be a diplomatic Emperor action similar to that for Enforce Religious Unity. Enforcing religion needs to be unlocked (e.g. Winning League War), depends on diplo rep and other relations with target nation, and costs 1 IA. If it is granted, then there is negative relations with others of the same religion as the target nation had been. Refusing to convert grants Emperor CB vs target. Imagine that Emperor gets similar action for "Rein In". Unlocked by the 1460s event or whatever. Would depend on diplo rep and other relations (RM, alliance, opinion, etc) with target, and would also cost 1 IA. If granted, then all remaining HRE nations with Italian culture (or geographically in Italy?) not yet "reined in" would get negative opinion modifier. If refused, then given unique CB for rein in. This would help Emperor deal with non-adjacent Italian nations directly instead of no-cb or else having to deal with stuff like warring their allies for now reason just to war with them indirectly.

2. Rather than simply "winning a war" with the Italian nations, which could be as meaningless as taking a single ducat, and possibly just from war leader and not even target nation directly; I propose making "Rein In" a peace term. Cost could be something like 10 WS, like concede defeat. Maybe up to 30 if felt needed for balance. Just seems like throwing an actual peace term makes sense more than an arbitrary "victory".
 
Are there partial rewards for keeping Italy in the HRE? You said it was +25 IA for keeping all of them, it would make sense if this scaled between +25 and -50 depending on what percentage was kept inside the empire. Also, is there anything done about stragglers? Such as if Florence lost a war, but the rest of Italy left.
 
Does this give Venice players a back door into the Empire?
Step 1: Establish good relations with the Emperor, join Empire.
Step 2: Snipe at Ottomans until they attack you, calling in the Empire.
Step 3: Profit.
 
Secondly—and this is a bit of pet peeve of mine—the situation of Dutch revolts against Spanish is quite similar to the phenomenon of Maratha revolts against Mughals. Can we also implement a similar disaster for that?

Also for the Cossacks in Zaporoszhye perhaps, who though always unsuccessful, loved to revolt and rebel against everyone if their overlords became too weak.
 
Also for the Cossacks in Zaporoszhye perhaps, who though always unsuccessful, loved to revolt and rebel against everyone if their overlords became too weak.

The Catalans too.
 
I fully agree. I should also mention that the formation of the Netherlands as it would come to be, was by no means some historical certainty.

While the years of Burgundian rule had created more unity and some centralization among the Seventeen Provinces it was still a cultural patchwork and there was no real 'national' sense of belonging. Also made clear by how the southern and northern Netherlands would end up having very divergent paths despite belonging to the same union and the Dutch revolt having its nexus in Flanders, Wallonia and Brabant.

Culturally provinces such as Limburg and Gelre had far more in common with Cologne, Cleves and Julich than with Flanders, Hainaut or Friesland. And vice versa Charles the Bold on a successful campaign in the Rhineland could have very well led to a Netherlands further down the line including those lands. Those lands also had more in common with much of the Netherlands than with say Austria or Bavaria.

Netherlands appearing in about 1/3 of the simulations seems about right. Netherlands falling apart into independent counties and duchies under the HRE is just as plausible. Or the Netherlands being the center of a Burgundy which is an Imperial Kingdom within the HRE, or an independent kingdom outside of the HRE and having it's own path of development.

For a formed Netherlands some more flexibility in its path would be nice. As a largely littoral state some sort of naval focus would be clear but historically it could have just as well become a monarchy with its capital in Brussels or Antwerp.

This is largely akin to saying the formation of Germany in its present form was not certain to happen.

Although its form would certainly have varied; perhaps Austria would have joined if they weren't as strong or perhaps Austria could have been the one to form Germany but it is highly likely almost to a certainty that a centralized power would come out of that region.

In the Netherlands if France was not the centralized ruler of Burgundy its highly likely Burgundy or France would have lost even more land to the Netherlands. So I am not convinced by the argument that the Netherlands should be less likely to form due to the possibility of them being weaker because the inverse was just as likely they could have formed in an even stronger form than they did historically if France was weaker.

Speculating on the likelihood of them forming only lends to the argument that we don't know and maybe the disaster should affect more than it currently does.
 
Did I get it rigth? - won ANY war against AI (even secondary participant) and later relation do not matter OR high relations. It would be absurdly easy for human. I guess that within first 50 years I could do it against ALL princes (military condition), not only Italian (how many, 8? as Montferrat will be annexed anyway)

Edit: will princes get at least some negative modifiers because Emperor is trying to rein them in? Some ticking-something?
 
With regards to the Dutch revolts -

Does this disaster need to be constrained to The Netherlands? It strikes me that this could be used as a generic disaster where any culture fulfils those requirements within a nation
If it was applied as a generic disaster expanding in general would be a massive headache and greatly displease the very vocal blobing community (personally i agree expanding should be harder, and empires should colapse and fragment more easily and often, but opinions in this subject are very divided).

I guess, if the answer to that is “no” then why have it for the Dutch?
Because not every conquered people waged a successful 80 years war of independence which changed the balance of power in Europe.
The Dutch revolts was more of an exception than the norm.

Beyond railroading history, is there any good reason for it to exist?)
As this is an historical game, i am in favour of railroading history as much as possible as long as the player is still given agency to change the historical outcomes.
 
Does that mean that there will finally be a Join War code effect? That would be phenomenal!

It does indeed :)

That's awesome! I was waiting for effect like this. But I do have a question about these events that invites the rivals to join the Dutch independence war ... how does the AI decide on whether to join the war or not? Unless you add in multiple ai_factor instances to account for various things (income, war exhaustion, global unrest, stability, etc.) to take into consideration for the AI players before joining the war which probably can end up being a pretty lengthy list. Does this imply that AI can now decide on which event options to pick independently of the ai_factor? Or do ai_factor still control the AI choosing the options?
 
I always thought that moving your capital to the lowlands region as Spain (or Austria) is "too easy" of a solution. To my knowledge, there is no penalty for doing this and it instantly disables the Dutch revolt, which seems quite unrealistic to me. For the tag that receives the Burgundian Inheritance, can we add a penalty for not having your capital in the core territory (i.e., Iberia for Spain, Austria for Austria etc.) or with primary culture? Then it wouldn't be a magical solution to stop the Dutch revolts.
Actually I'd prefer a real mechanic for this, such as M&T communication efficiency mechanic. This way distance between capital and rest of the lands would actually matter and we may not need such arbitrary restrictions including moving capital to another continent.
That's awesome! I was waiting for effect like this. But I do have a question about these events that invites the rivals to join the Dutch independence war ... how does the AI decide on whether to join the war or not? Unless you add in multiple ai_factor instances to account for various things (income, war exhaustion, global unrest, stability, etc.) to take into consideration for the AI players before joining the war which probably can end up being a pretty lengthy list. Does this imply that AI can now decide on which event options to pick independently of the ai_factor? Or do ai_factor still control the AI choosing the options?
I guess they will just join the war. Dynamic calculation for AI in events would be great though but i don't think so.