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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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Thank you for this great addition ! Been waiting for it for quite a while... :p

We have quite a lot of other new effects and triggers that I'm sure you will find useful :)
 
I knew that Bishop led the charges (in Bouvine for instance), but Pope? Wow, catholicism would find a lot of converts if the Pope was actually bombing Daesh haha
 
I knew that Bishop led the charges (in Bouvine for instance), but Pope? Wow, catholicism would find a lot of converts if the Pope was actually bombing Daesh haha
Let's stop here to fantasise a little about the best-in-history gear naming possibilities:
"Wrath of God" class ICBMs, "Leviathan" class submarines, "Archangel Michael" jet fighters, "Flaming Sword" missiles etc.
 
So since there's a disaster on Dutch independence, should the HRE emperor have something similar to Rein in Northern Italy for the Netherlands, but called Rein in the Low Countries to prevent them from leaving?
 
It's is great to see these particular events reworked, as previously the only way to keep Italy within the Empire was warring again and again in Italy as the Emperor, most often incurring in th wrath of the Pope.

As for the Netherlands war of independence I take that just as now, if you manage to convert the specific provinces to your culture the event chain won't fire, right?
 
We have quite a lot of other new effects and triggers that I'm sure you will find useful :)

I also hope this join_war effect will also allow you to specify whether joining the attacker or defender side. Yeah, one can only dream more. :p

It would also be great if we can mod the "Intervene in War" Great Power diplomatic action as well.

And, finally, letting us mod in the new special regiments when? I want Highlands regiments for the British Army, damn it. :p
 
I also hope this join_war effect will also allow you to specify whether joining the attacker or defender side. Yeah, one can only dream more. :p

It would also be great if we can mod the "Intervene in War" Great Power diplomatic action as well.

And, finally, letting us mod in the new special regiments when? I want Highlands regiments for the British Army, damn it. :p
I thought you could mod in special units, surely just copy paste then edit the code, they don't have special unit models so how hard could they be
 
I thought you could mod in special units, surely just copy paste then edit the code, they don't have special unit models so how hard could they be

To my knowledge, they are hard-coded. They are not exposed for modding yet.
 
I might have missed if someone has asked this question already, but what counts for the emperor winning a war against an Italian prince? Do they have to be the war leader of their side, a co-belligerent, or will them just being on the opposite side work? And does the Emperor need to be the war leader on his side?
 
What happens if you are playing as one of the Dutch minors that wasn't annexed and the other Dutch provinces revolt? Does the player become automatically become Netherlands or does an event pop up asking to join the revolt which eventually makes the player the Netherlands if successful?
 
I might have missed if someone has asked this question already, but what counts for the emperor winning a war against an Italian prince? Do they have to be the war leader of their side, a co-belligerent, or will them just being on the opposite side work? And does the Emperor need to be the war leader on his side?
I think they said that being a participant on the opposite side of the war was all that was needed, and I assume that by 'winning' there has to have been at least one war concession.
 
A player needs 197 relations in 1444 to join as Venice, so actually very easy to do
All you have to do to join empire as Venice in 1444 is to set the clock to 1821 and then back to 1444 and Venice will be in the empire from the start for some reason
Changing the start date to something else and then going back to 1444 not a good idea. It has many side effects:
  • religious peace in the HRE
  • England starts as a republican dictatorship(they often choose to become a merchant republic afterwards and explode, because they have too many provinces)
  • the shogunate is broken. Daimyos count as normal vassals, but can't keep their first government reform
  • Milan, Junagarh, Kolathunad, Mysore, Yarkand, Tsang, Lithuania, Sus, Jangladesh, Uzbek, Würzburg, Timbuktu, Najd, Sweden, Frankfurt, Lucca, Baluchistan, Florence, Tunesia, Asikaga and all Daimyos, can choose their first government reform
  • some countries start with the wrong government reform: France, Navarra, Ferrara, Burgundy, Mantua, Hungary, Norway, Aragon, Denmark, Lorraine, Naples, Provence, Nevers, Montferrat, Brandenburg, Brittany, Wurttemberg, Savoy, Austria, Scotland, Castile, Portugal and Bohemia(all Autocracy instead of Feudal nobility), Granada(Autocracy instead of Iqta) Sirhind(Iqta instead of Indian Sultanate), Mewat(Feudal Nobility instead of Rajaput Kingdom) and Ming(Feudal nobility instead of celestial empire, but they are still the emperor of china and have the mandate of heaven)
  • some nations have cores in land that they don't own(e.g Ottomans around Mecca)
  • at least 7 countries don't have cores on some of their own land(e.g. Mecklenburg has no core on Wismar and the Emperor can demand unlawful territory)
  • France is an empire
  • Frankfurt is not a Free city
  • Venice is part of the HRE
  • Some more provinces(Charolais, Provence, Forcalquier, Gent) are part of the HRE. These provinces belong to countries which are not part of the HRE
These are the things that I know about, but there are probably many more. I think they also differ depending on which date you look at.
Some of the things(broken Japan) also happen if you look at another save game before starting your game. And in that case Novgorod, Morroco, Mysore, Ming and probably many more don't start with the first government reform