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EU4 - Development Diary - 19th of January 2021

Hello and Welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. 2020 was an interesting year to say the least, but now we are in 2021, and the Tinto team is now fully up to speed with working on the new expansion. Today we’ll focus on some new aspects related to Heirs, Regencies and Estates.

First of all, one change for heirs and their legitimacy is that it will start a fair bit lower on average, and slowly increase over time as the heir grows older. Having high prestige increases it faster. Please note that corruption in your court increases it, as there is nothing screaming legitimate future King as much as a few sacks of gold in your pocket.

Secondly, with this new expansion, we have removed the regency councils, and instead replaced them by Estate Regencies.

Instead, a Regent will be generated from your most powerful estate. This will further increase the power of that estate, which might also give you a specific benefit or not.

eu4_18.png

Please note however that this does not replace consort regencies - consorts will still take priority over an estate-led regency

Thirdly, we are adding the option for extending a regency. Extending a regency reduces legitimacy by 10, and extends the current regency with another 5 years. Of course, the claim of the heir continues to increase. While a regency has some drawbacks, this can be very beneficial, if your heir is an imbecile, and your regency council is not entire incompetent.

Lest we forget, we have also changed so that you are no longer constantly losing legitimacy the longer you have a regency, but instead its an increase in stability cost.

We are also adding a fair bit more interesting events that occur when you are in a regency, all to add more interesting flavor to the experience, not to mention interesting situations.

As you may have noticed, this is one of the shorter development diaries, even if it gives you some new features, but next week, we’ll return to an interesting look at some more american nations and their content.
 
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they will most likely be primary culture, and state religion, as the estates themselves do not know anything else.


EDIT: talked to the programmer, we'll add that it will pick religion/culture from a random province you have with the christian religion group for the dhimmi
I take it the Christian group is an example here, as the Dhimmi can also represent other non-Muslims. Any chance that Maratha/Rajput dominance would result in Marthi/Rajput regent? I could also see Cossack regent being picked with culture of one of steppe provinces.

Asking for Jain religion for the sake of Jain regents is probably a bit too much.
 
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As you may have noticed, this is one of the shorter development diaries, even if it gives you some new features, but next week, we’ll return to an interesting look at some more american nations and their content.

Fingers crossed this includes South America, a look at the region is long overdue!
 
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That would be cool, but its entirely outside the scope of EU4.
Hmm. I could interpret that two ways. In one sense, it could just be outside the purview of the game mechanics, which is fair enough though it’d also mean that the game mechanics could be altered so that it is within their scope. In the second sense, it could be that it’s beyond the scope of EU4’s timeline, which would be inaccurate. Over half of the game’s timeline takes place prior to the Peace of Westphalia; it was only after that that the dynasty began to be superseded by the state. I think having more in-depth dynastic mechanics at least up until the Age of Absolutism would do a lot to improve the game’s historical accuracy/realism, as well as making it even more fun.
 
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they will most likely be primary culture, and state religion, as the estates themselves do not know anything else.


EDIT: talked to the programmer, we'll add that it will pick religion/culture from a random province you have with the christian religion group for the dhimmi

And with the Dharmic religion group for the brahmin, etc, right?
 
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Hmm. I could interpret that two ways. In one sense, it could just be outside the purview of the game mechanics, which is fair enough though it’d also mean that the game mechanics could be altered so that it is within their scope. In the second sense, it could be that it’s beyond the scope of EU4’s timeline. Over half of the game’s timeline takes place prior to the Peace of Westphalia; it was only after that that the dynasty began to be superseded by the state. I think having more in-depth dynastic mechanics at least up until the Age of Absolutism would do a lot to improve the game’s historical accuracy/realism, as well as making it even more fun.
Or there is a third reason,since EU4 is an old game,making this type of big mechanics change at this stage of his life can broke a lot of things,including the AI.So this type of feature will probably be for an eventual EU5.
 
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One day I hope we have enough time to kill the faction system with fire and salt its remains forever.

That day is not today :(
For what it’s worth, I’d love for the factions to be integrated into all tags’ mechanics so they all get both estates and factions— the estates representing powerful groups that exist largely independent of the ruling apparatus; the factions representing different interests exerting influence within it. I think that’d go a long way towards representing the deeper internal politics that I and so many others crave in EU4.

EDIT: Autocorrect changed “tags’” to “tabs’”.
 
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When ruler culture and religion was first added, it felt like a nice but somewhat unnecessary odd-on, as there were few cases where the religion and culture could differ from that of the country, but now it seems like there is quite a wide range of possibilities for the aspect to be relevant (ruler, consort regent, estate regent).
 
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Or there is a third reason,since EU4 is an old game,making this type of big mechanics change at this stage of his life can broke a lot of things,including the AI.So this type of feature will probably be for an eventual EU5.
Ah, that, too. Though I’ll hope otherwise.

EDIT: That said, though I am ignorant of the coding behind it, it seems to me that the changes to estates in 1.30 were significantly greater than the changes to dynasties would be if a simple family tree mechanic was added.
 
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When ruler culture and religion was first added, it felt like a nice but somewhat unnecessary odd-on, as there were few cases where the religion and culture could differ from that of the country, but now it seems like there is quite a wide range of possibilities for the aspect to be relevant (ruler, consort regent, estate regent).
This. It’s something that I hope continues to grow in relevance.
 
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What if there is no estate (as a modder)?

if no estates, no estate regencies, only the normal regency council mechanic.. same as if you do not buy this expansion.
 
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Fingers crossed this includes South America, a look at the region is long overdue!
It’s long overdue, but really, it deserves a DLC entirely of its own. I’m gonna hope they update it in depth a couple patches from now, rather than doing a cursory update now that’s tacked onto all the other regions they’re focusing on.
 
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Or there is a third reason,since EU4 is an old game,making this type of big mechanics change at this stage of his life can broke a lot of things,including the AI.

this.
 
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