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EU4 - Development Diary - 17th of January 2017

Hello everyone, in today's development diary we’ll go into details about the Age of Absolutism and the Absolutism mechanic. The absolutism mechanic is part of the free patch, while the Age abilities and objectives are part of the expansion.

So, how does the absolutism mechanic now work?

First of all, we’ve removed the Absolute Monarchy government form.

Secondly, administrative efficiency from technology is now 10% from each tech giving it.

Governments now have an “Absolutism” value, which ranges from 0 to 100, and this increases your administrative efficiency with up to 40% and your discipline with up to 5%, and makes foreign cores on you decay 3 times as quick at maximum absolutism.

There is also a maximum value to absolutism a nation can have, which defaults to 65, with legitimacy increasing it up to +20, republics decreasing it by 30, religious unity increasing it by 5, great power by 5, being empire by 5, and several other factors.

Several events and ideas talking about absolutism now affect absolutism either by directly increasing it, or having a yearly increase.

Absolutism is not just a number that ticks up or down like so many others, this is tied into the actions you do as a player.

Doing harsh treatment on rebels, increasing stability and decreasing autonomy in a province each increase absolutism by +1.

Increasing autonomy reduce it by 2, debase currency reduce it by 1, accepting rebel demands reduce it by 10, assigning a seat in parliament by 3 and reducing war exhaustion reduce it by 1.

These numbers will be tweaked during the development, and actions impacting absolutism may be added or removed from this list.

Whats cool for modders is that you can script absolutism impact individually for your age.
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Here is the special things regarding the Age of Absolutism, which lasts from 1620 until 1710.

Rules

Absolutism mechanics are enabled.
English Civil War & Court & Country Disaster, can only happen in this Age.

Objectives
  1. Have 3 Trade Companies
  2. Own and Control at least 3 Universities.
  3. Have 90%+ Absolutism
  4. At least 5 different cultures promoted.
  5. Be Emperor of China
  6. Reach a force-limit of 200 regiments.
  7. Be on victorious side of the religious war.

Abilities
  • 50% shorter unrest impact from changing autonomy (shorter cooldown)
  • +1 Yearly Absolutism
  • 50% cheaper and quicker to change rivals
  • Forts bordering rivals are free to maintain
  • +5% Administrative efficiency
  • Allow Edict “Edict of Abolutism” 10 years less separatism in state.
  • Harsh Treatment 50% cheaper
  • France - 20% extra firedamage
  • Netherlands - 0.2 corruption reduction
  • Sweden - +35% manpower recovery
  • Manchu - +50% Larger Banners
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Next week, we’ll look into the Age of Revolutions.
 
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Other government in the place of absolute monarchy?


I sense mass conversion in Europa in this age, if Treaty of Westphalia will not exist
What makes you think there'll be no Peace of Westphalia?
 
Those new features... Well, let's say they aren't as exciting as previous ones.
Obviously republics should be buffed somehow, and I believe monarchy mechanic is getting a little overwhelming by this point.
 
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Don't Forget to Makes Revolutionary Empire can be formed outside Europe, it's just a bit hard to push into Europe as Chinese tech tree countries...

BTW, don't forget to give more love to South East Asian countries, it's all generics, so please give it some love
 
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So, Absolutism Mechanic will be free but to have all the bonuses one has to be great power owning rights of men and also presumably own the next dlc too since you get +1 absolutism as ability. Pretty sums up why i think the base game ain't getting any complete feature at all and is merely adapting around the new dlc. Saddens me to see a mechanic become a mosaic of dlcs
 
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That's the point.
It's called balancing.

Its called "Humanism is now mandatory to keep revolts down after you lower anatomy."

So, Absolutism Mechanic will be free but to have all the bonuses one has to be great power owning rights of men and also presumably own the next dlc too since you get +1 absolutism as ability. Pretty sums up why i think the base game ain't getting any complete feature at all and is merely adapting around the new dlc. Saddens me to see a mechanic become a mosaic of dlcs

You must be new around here, DLC's have added mechanics and been dependant on to get the best game experience for a long time. This is nothing new.

One does wonder how Paradox intends to sell EU5 as a base game eventually, with years of content reserved for DLC being not in the base game.
 
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Its called "Humanism is now mandatory to keep revolts down after you lower anatomy."



You must be new around here, DLC's have added mechanics and been dependant on to get the best game experience for a long time. This is nothing new.

One does wonder how Paradox intends to sell EU5 as a base game eventually, with years of content reserved for DLC being not in the base game.
Didn't EU4 include pretty much include EU3 and all its DLC?
 
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The change to age start dates is a step in the right direction, but it's still a hard division of drastically divergent mechanics at specific points. That doesn't help to solve the issues @bbqftw brought up on the previous page where you engage in awkward strategies like timing your diplomatic annexations in order to maximize Absolutism gains. I can think of other weird tactics too, like avoiding gains to monthly autonomy reduction prior to Absolutism, keeping your province autonomy levels around 15%, and boosting autonomy 25% in all provinces around 30 years before Absolutism lands. As soon as it comes into effect and the 30 year restriction on your provinces ends, instantly reduce autonomy on all those provinces. Why is this kind of behavior being incentivized?

The system needed to be designed in such a way that mechanics gradually faded in (and if necessary, gradually faded out). If Absolutism appeared much earlier but had a much more limited scope at first, then gradually became more and more important, then there would be no hard and fast rule of "this is when you should time your actions for maximum effectiveness." Being able to mod the start conditions doesn't help us achieve this, I don't think, although if all the elements individually are moddable then maybe something like that is possible?

"Appears 10 years after Global Trade" feels better than a hard year, but in practice it's nearly identical. There's very little wiggle room there because Global Trade is going to appear every game within a very short range of years, and it still doesn't reflect anything about world developments.
 
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Honestly the best way to make it feel non arbitrary would be make the start dates mtth with modifiers, then make the modifiers you get from each age decay over time instead of disappearing at once
 
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Honestly the best way to make it feel non arbitrary would be make the start dates mtth with modifiers, then make the modifiers you get from each age decay over time instead of disappearing at once

Agreed. Would be really nice to have modifiers decay and decline as splendor accrues/depletes at the beginning/end of an age. That way the player can also choose which modifiers to keep around and which to drop -- similar to the Fervor mechanic for Reformed.
 
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What makes you think there'll be no Peace of Westphalia?

I think he meant that everybody will "want" to AVOID peace of westphalia and force a winner one way or another to get more bonus. Not that it cease to exist.
 
wonder if AI will be weighted towards converting (remember convert to Prot/Reformed is a goal in the prior age) to incentivize winning league war.

That said, its odd that it happens in this age, generally religious war fires earlier than this age should happen. So what happens in that instance?
 
That said, its odd that it happens in this age, generally religious war fires earlier than this age should happen. So what happens in that instance?
IMO after age of reformation Religious war in HRE isn't de facto possible (religiuos rules end in 1650)
 
How can i use this and when can i use this?
You... Buy it in the dlc... In the future...(only specific mechanics of course)
 
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