• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

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.”

eu4_9.png


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.

eu4_5.png


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!
 
  • 3Like
Reactions:
It's great seeing this work done. I want every nation to have many historical disasters. It's a great mechanic in my opinion. I'd also like to take this opportunity to say, CK2 could really use some work like this. Because when you go through the various bookmarks or just pick a random year, so many historical rebellions and wars are missing. The political situation is just wrong for so many years.
 
The Catalans too.

An interesting one -- yeah! I'm not too familiar with GC's features but did it introduce anything to resemble the regional cortes'? Well, looking at it, it doesn't...

This here would be an okay mechanic to resemble the regional cortes' (and other regional parliaments) through cultural unity. The option would be to either have numerous Catalan/other minority revolts in a very centralized state (of not their culture) or a de-centralized Aragon/Catalonia/Valencia/whatever region with some power in those regions for no matter who conquers it.

All of these areas (and the Lowlands and even Zaporoshzye) were a lot more for securing and retaining their historic rights than actual independence (at least to begin with as one post highlighted in detail above). The same even should really be the case in Ireland and Scotland which retained their historic parliaments until relatively late -- and policy had to pass these.

I guess that this is a good illustration on how abstract the revolt mechanic is right now as the only people everyone would have been happy to slaughter were the peasants; nobility often found a foreign supporter for their desires, and shouldn't really be considered under the same tag. I wonder if the new mercenary mechanic will move towards that as it seems that to a degree we will get tags which don't own land but form alliances and can be friendly/enemy depending on your relations.
 
It will depend on the outcome.

Not explicitly, but being at war incurs a relations penalty and a truce so they'll be harder to rein in in that sense.

what about "reigning them in" the "old way" by conquering northern Italy? do you still get the Imperial Authority and Prestige benefits?
 
Do you have any plans to handle the Pragmatic Sanction differntly? It seems to me that it would be perfect for an Imperial Incident as the the current situation does not do the real chaos of the War of Austrian Sucession credit in any way.

I already made a simular post to this topic in a previous dev diary regarding the role of Lorraine in the whole mess:

#Love for Lorraine:)

Please tell us what you have in store for Lorraine. They are in an ideal position to be a NEWER, BETTER Burgandy without the baggage of Austria and France hating you. You can even ally both to dominate west germany and bringing back the third Carolian power of Middlefrankia.

Some unique missions would be nice, as it has so many opportuities. Not many countries enable you to domiante BOTH Italy and the Low Countires mid game and be a colonial powerhouse at the same time.

Or maybe an event chain that puts Lorrains monach as consort on the austrian throne and lets you switch to play as austria, when she has an female heir, is emperor and the pragmatic sanction is not yet inacted as soon as their ruler dies. That would reflect the real world events and would establish the Habsburg-Lorraine house.
It should per option make lorrain either a pu - with france getting a reconquest cb - or ceeding lorraine heartlands to the BBB, for france giving up all HRE territories and back to their last owners or austria.

A reply would be most welcome;)

My idea for an eventchain to bring Austria and Lorraine together could serve as an example how the Pragmatic Sanction should be handled as Maria Theresia tried to put in motion a chain of landswaps and genius level political moves to keep emperorship. A simular chain of diplomacy with returning cores, revoking imperial lands and so on would fit perfectly for EU4, and if doesnt work out a strong country of the HRE could get something like a Contest Emerorship CB
 
Everytime I see flavour like this I wish it were generalised so that other parts of the world could benefit from it.

Also, if humanism can disable disasters like this it should enable other disasters. For example, it could cause radical clergy or peasants in your realm to revolt, or cause a pretender with the backing of the church to rise. Random thoughts off the top of my head, but I like the idea of a nation's religious stance coming with both pros and cons.
 
Everytime I see flavour like this I wish it were generalised so that other parts of the world could benefit from it.

Also, if humanism can disable disasters like this it should enable other disasters. For example, it could cause radical clergy or peasants in your realm to revolt, or cause a pretender with the backing of the church to rise. Random thoughts off the top of my head, but I like the idea of a nation's religious stance coming with both pros and cons.

Agree with you, but it is not the way EU4 works. Most changes are either pros OR cons.
 
So I can avoid Dutch revolts by expelling Dutch&co from Lowlands as Spain and this becomes even an easier option to deal with the Revolt as I can accept some of those cultures to do less expulsion.

Is minority expulsion still going to be ignored? Or Castile-Spain will have even less chances to inherit Burgundian lands to avoid the issue?


They should just remove this feature tbh it results in some very unhistorical cultures like Spain expelling Sicilians or Catalans to Florida and Portugal sending the Berbers to Brazil. They should make the AI not expel as much minorities as they do now.
 
Also for the Cossacks in Zaporoszhye perhaps, who though always unsuccessful, loved to revolt and rebel against everyone if their overlords became too weak.

This one will require some changes to the requirements, either:

a) Provinces in the Ruthenia/Pontic Steppe region owned by the Cossacks estate (Could lead to a ahistorically large Zaporozhia nation)
b) Provinces of a new Zaporozhian culture (likely too niche for PDX to add)
c) Specific provinces if owned by Cossacks (Not a fan of this, and PDX says that they will try to make decisions (maybe events like this) require less specific provinces)
 
Could lead to a ahistorically large Zaporozhia nation

That did happen irl under Khmelnytsky (map in 1649), but game ignores this historical outcome which never happens.

pic_C_O_Cossack_Hetman_State_after_1649.jpg

Although, funnily enough, two decades later there were both Zaporozhia and a separate Hetmanate (which was in heavy civil war). Zaporozhia and Hetmanate (reduced later only to Left Bank of Dnieper under Russians) existed till 1775 and 1760s accordingly.
 
Can you choose to become the Dutch when the revolt happens?

Or is the only Ironman way to play the Netherlands to create the country by starting as a Burgundian subject and then conquering lots of land?
 
Agree with you, but it is not the way EU4 works. Most changes are either pros OR cons.

Religious intolerance does comes with cons though, especially given the change in missionary cost.
 
If X defeats an Italian state A in war as emperor and reins them in, and later Y becomes emperor, is A still considered reined in, or does Y have to defeat them in war as well?

Similarly, when does the good relation check happen? If A has good relations with X and then a new emperor comes along, does A know or care that it had good relations with a previous emperor?