Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries
Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • 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.
Europa Universalis IV 82782 EUIV: Bug Reports 1353 EUIV: Suggestions 19382 EUIV: Technical Support 6899 EUIV: FAQ & Strategy Guides 241 EUIV: AAR's, Let's Plays, and Fan Fiction EU IV: Alternate History Short Story Contest Contr 30
Previous dev diary Next dev diary
Show only dev responses

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.
eu4_5.png




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
eu4_4.png


Next week, we’ll look into the Age of Revolutions.
 
  • 116
  • 41
  • 37
Reactions:
Sort by date Sort by reaction score
Cheers for the DD Johan :). Another interesting mechanic, and well tied in with things :). Only thing that niggles at the back of my mind is that it's a bit one-note - higher absolutism is good, lower absolutism is bad, which wasn't really the way things were, at least as far as I understand it. Note, I've read:

Johan said:
Liberalism is likelier to happen at high absolutism.
Click to expand...

But would it potentially be useful to have more benefits to low absolutism? Things like a stronger economy (buff to production or the like?) that are more likely to occur in a state that's not buckling under the absolutist rule of its king/dictator/what-have-you? Not suggesting it needs it, but on face value the 'absolutism is good, but you might get liberalism' feels like it could be a deeper mechanic with very little extra work, using existing mechanics that are already in the game.
 
  • 3
  • 1
Reactions:
I've been a bit cool about the some of the features of ages so far so I haven't really weighed in, but I like this new absolutism mechanic so far. More dynamic variables for governments is a good thing in my opinion.

Also, −0.2 corruption for the Netherlands‽ :eek: That's amazing! I might need to play a game as them for the first time. I would kill [another country] to be able to get that much corruption reduction in a normal game. All that money saved on not needing to buy down corruption, being able to take unbalanced research, and running a constant 100% overextension and <100% religious unity without having my most precious resource constantly nickel-and-dimed in every single interaction involving it? Sign me up!

(As an aside, do I just have slightly different code than people posting about how the Netherlands never seem to form? They form in, like, 90%+ of my games, usually as a solid mid-level power in Europe. They're a major pain to fight late game, too, with their level 8 forts in 9 out of 10 provinces they own. Complaining about Qing, or Mughals, or Prussia I could see, I've only seen Prussia and Qing once each in over a thousand hours of gameplay, and Mughals never, but the Netherlands happen about as often as the Burgundian Inheritance or Iberian Wedding.)
 
Philadelphus said:
I've been a bit cool about the some of the features of ages so far so I haven't really weighed in, but I like this new absolutism mechanic so far. More dynamic variables for governments is a good thing in my opinion.

Also, −0.2 corruption for the Netherlands‽ :eek: That's amazing! I might need to play a game as them for the first time. I would kill [another country] to be able to get that much corruption reduction in a normal game. All that money saved on not needing to buy down corruption, being able to take unbalanced research, and running a constant 100% overextension and <100% religious unity without having my most precious resource constantly nickel-and-dimed in every single interaction involving it? Sign me up!

(As an aside, do I just have slightly different code than people posting about how the Netherlands never seem to form? They form in, like, 90%+ of my games, usually as a solid mid-level power in Europe. They're a major pain to fight late game, too, with their level 8 forts in 9 out of 10 provinces they own. Complaining about Qing, or Mughals, or Prussia I could see, I've only seen Prussia and Qing once each in over a thousand hours of gameplay, and Mughals never, but the Netherlands happen about as often as the Burgundian Inheritance or Iberian Wedding.)
Click to expand...

You misunderstood what I meant by Netherlands not forming as often.

The problem IS not that they can't form. But rather that when they try to break out from their owner (the initial rebellion). The owner would manage to take 75-90% of Netherlands back and screw them over and nobody can help. Not even a player.

It is far easier for Netherlands to come into power if they go the route players usually takes. Break from Burgundy somehow ASAP and blob from there. Or one of the non-vassal Low Country and blob into HRE and form Netherlands from there.

Even if the AI manage to do it like this they are already in dangerous water by being eat up by either England or France or whatever problem they run into.

Same problem face all other form-able countries as AI. Too many factor to make certain Netherlands come into form and strong.
 
TheDungen said:
Force limit and merc bonuses would be totally wrong sweden's armies were never large and in that era sweden switched out it's reliance on mercs for a professional army.
Click to expand...

The swedish army was vast compared to its population. That argues for forcelimit (or national manpower) not manpower recovery. (in fact the major problem with the carolean army was precisely that while it could produce a huge number of well-trained troops (for the population) it couldn't replace them (quickly) as they were lost, and previous solutions (selling/gifting land to pay for mercenaries) was no longer availible since so much of the land was taken up by the system.

Sweden could field an army that was about a third smaller than Russia at the outset of the Great Northern War, with a population about 1/7th of the russian one. (and actually fielded a larger army than the PLC, which had a population about 4-5 times that of Sweden)
 
  • 5
  • 4
  • 1
Reactions:
Holy mother of god...
This mechanic might the most I've looked forward to for a long time, if not ever.
 
Toni Martoni said:
Interesting, but it's common to increase autonomy when you conquer loads of lands, so it will be really hard to stay at high absolutism
Click to expand...
That's the point.
It's called balancing.
 
  • 4
Reactions:
Can we get a wallpaper of the artworks used for the ages? I love the one for Absolutism.

Also, in the first screenshot above the absolutism value is another number that is 0... liberalism mechanic?
 
  • 1
Reactions:
"Make sure to set major vassals to diploannex around 1650. This way you can spam lower autonomy on them and immediately max out your absolutism counter..."

All hail WoW with maps, death to historical immersion.

Should be interesting to see how this affects standard blobbing builds, we finally have a very strong incentive to go humanist and this really taxes our monarch point expenditures in the adm eff era. Reinforcing admin points universalis? Cannot say I am surprised.

random nerf to republics. Ok...

Buff to Abrahamic religions as well, since DotF now raises in priority and TotF is also a larger priority. But who can really be surprised?

There are other ways absolutism can be gamed (I can imagine some really stupid setups), but I'll shut my mouth now...
 
Last edited:
  • 4
  • 1
Reactions:
Dakkadakka127 said:
Can we get a wallpaper of the artworks used for the ages? I love the one for Absolutism.

Also, in the first screenshot above the absolutism value is another number that is 0... liberalism mechanic?
Click to expand...

If I'm interpreting them correctly (and I'm quite confident I am), the first number is the actual absolutism value at the moment, and the second value (52) is the limit at the moment.
 
Arilou said:
The swedish army was vast compared to its population. That argues for forcelimit (or national manpower) not manpower recovery. (in fact the major problem with the carolean army was precisely that while it could produce a huge number of well-trained troops (for the population) it couldn't replace them (quickly) as they were lost, and previous solutions (selling/gifting land to pay for mercenaries) was no longer availible since so much of the land was taken up by the system.

Sweden could field an army that was about a third smaller than Russia at the outset of the Great Northern War, with a population about 1/7th of the russian one. (and actually fielded a larger army than the PLC, which had a population about 4-5 times that of Sweden)
Click to expand...
That's the same war what you're talking about would be reinforce rate. Manpower recovery is about being able to train a new army for the next war. and indelningsverket was created for that. The reason that sweden could field a larger army was simply lower autonomy. Sweden was a centralized monarchy had been for a long time, Russia had just abandoned the feudal system.
 
  • 1
Reactions:
I don't understand why you remove the absolute monarchy, replacing it with numbers or modifiers simply isn't the same. I have been playing EU since EU2 and this is like peeing in your pants just to get warm for a short while. The expectations from the players for new mechanics have reached a level where you as developers start to remove basic and fundamental parts of the game. It really saddens me. You should remember your roots.
 
  • 4
  • 3
Reactions:
From twitter [https://twitter.com/producerjohan]:
Start of ages are now fully scriptable for @E_Universalis 1.20...

C2cTk2GXEAA_WEA.jpg

This should make most/some of the complainers happy.


Edit: Do note that nothing was said about this change being in vanilla, only that it is possible to mod.

Edit 2: Seems this is how its actually works now.
 
Last edited:
  • 12
Reactions:
  • 1
Reactions:
TheDungen said:
That's awesome but it'd be better with a modified mtth than that. Also does it work the other way around can we make the institutions based on the ages?
Click to expand...
Should be since they plan on replacing some general triggers in disasters/events with age triggers.
You would have to change the spawn conditions. Just be sure not to make weird inter-dependencies preventing them both from firing at all.
 
napoleonrolff said:
I don't understand why you remove the absolute monarchy,
Click to expand...
Because they think that this new mechanic is more interesting than "reach ADM 20, choose best non-revolutionary government in game, job done"
 
  • 4
Reactions:
SolSys said:
Should be since they plan on replacing some general triggers in disasters/events with age triggers.
You would have to change the spawn conditions. Just be sure not to make weird inter-dependencies preventing them both from firing at all.
Click to expand...
Oh yeah, I assume that centres of reformation will disappear at the end of the reformation too?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back