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EU4 - Development Diary - 21st of February 2017

Hello everyone. Tuesday has crept up on us once again which means it's time to armour up, grab my sword and jump back into the Thunderdome that is the Developer multiplayer, but before that, we've got a new Dev Diary!

Today we'll take a closer look at the much speculated Tributary States mechanic from the upcoming expansion. It's been fun reading the comments of this thread and see what the community has been suspecting we've put in the game. I'll be tackling that here

Getting straight to the meat of it, Tributary is a new subject type in Europa Universalis IV available for Nations in the Eastern Religion Group. Tributaries can be established both through warfare and through diplomacy and, while large nations are certainly not going to want to become your tributary willingly, through winning war you can force a nation of any size to bend the knee and pay up.

When you have established a nation as your Tributary, you will receive and annual tribute from them. You as their overlord are able to instruct them what to send, from Money, Administrative Power, Diplo Power, Military Power and Manpower. each year of successful tribute mutually raises trust between the nations. If you are the benevolent type of player, you can even tell them that no tribute is necessary. I am not a benevolent Overlord.


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Here is Ming with their mighty collection of Tributaries. Along with demanding annual tribute, there are some new interactions available exclusively for nations with tributaries (artwork for them not yet in, so don't mind the placeholders):


  • Bestow Gifts: send subject 0.5 of target’s yearly income,
  • Send additional troops: sent 2 years of subject’s manpower,
  • Demand artifacts: Take 5 prestige from subject,
  • Demand additional tribute: take 0.25 years of target’s income from target
these interactions will also affect the subjects' liberty desire, which brings us to an important point, what does it mean to be a tributary. For what purpose does a nation bend their knee to the tax collector?

Although Tributaries are subjects, they are the most free of any type of subject. They may make their own allies, subjects and foreign policy. They will not follow their overlord into wars or any of the usual subject behavior. Instead, they will be given protection. If another nation who is not also a tributary to the same overlord attacks them, their Overlord will be called to arms. The Overlord may accept or decline although, depending on the relationship and trust between the Overlord and Tributary. Declining will have ill effects on their relationship with their tributaries.

The main cause of relations going south is due to the subject refusing to give tribute. If liberty desire grows too high, caused by the usual modifiers from relative strength, relations etc, Tributaries may start thinking they would be better off keeping their hard-earned manpower, money or Power, and so refuse to give tribute. Eventually, this can lead to the Tributary relationship breaking down, so keep and eye on your subjects and don't demand too much additional Tribute.

Speaking of milking nations dry, it seemed only natural to give Hordes the ability to have tributaries. I've been having an absolute ball with my favourite nation keeping the Horde economy turning through my horseback tributary collectors.

eu4_111.png



Tributary States are a paid feature in the upcoming yet-unnamed expansion, and are available for Hordes and for nations in the Eastern Religion Group (Shinto, Confucian, Three Buddhists) and are additionally available for any nation who is the Emperor of China.

What is the Emperor of China, you ask?

We'll find that out next week.
 
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Why isn't Japan part of Ming tributary in 1444? They were part of tributary system at least until 17th century. Can't think top of my head if they sent tributes in 18th century though.

The system seems more befitting for horde tributary than cinocentric tributary system..

ps. come to think of it Manchus are missing from tributaries, too.
 
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Yes, I have seen this feature in your video. This is really great. Now I finally can feel comfortable when I play a nation in Far East. I never play China even though I'm a Chinese. The reason is simply it lacks a tributary system. This DLC is a must-have! However, I do hope when I play the next EU game you have made this feature in the game itself instead of introducing it with another expensive DLC. It is really an important feature that greatly improves historical immersion in Eastern countries.

Additionally, do you know that most countries in the region almost voluntarily became a tributary state? As legal trade with China was only possible through the tributary system, becoming a tributary state was not only necessary but beneficial. If the benefit is only gaining a protector, this will be still far away to historical accuracy.
 
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Additionally, do you know that most countries in the region almost voluntarily became a tributary state? As legal trade with China was only possible through the tributary system, becoming a tributary state was not only necessary but beneficial. If the benefit is only gaining a protector, this will be still far away to historical accuracy.

You know, you make it almost sound like the tributary system was to a large extent an exercise of soft power in diplomacy. Going along with this line of thinking, if the receiving country in question possessed a large, wealthy economy and a powerful army, the sending country might be inclined to request tributary status with the receiving country if tributary status provided substantial benefits as a derivative from these two facets of the receiving country which is trade bonus and military protection respectively.

But as with any systems established in pre-industrial civilizations, it is subject to a variance, especially if the ruler in question possessed almost unquestioned authority in his own government so he might also attempt to impose tributary status upon another state by force if he wish to. So it is not implausible to think either a human or AI player would attempt to impose the tributary status by force in their own right as a sovereign state. Of course, Westphalian sovereignty as a concept did not exist in Chinese world but for a practical purpose, the game depicted all states as almost equals to each other in terms of diplomacy for simplicity's sake.

But I think it would also be interesting to expand tributary status concept to something akin to a mutually-beneficial economic relationship as you described. Because China was an extremely lucrative market and tributary status is necessary to conduct legal trade with China as you proposed, especially for importing valuable goods such as tea and chinaware through trading companies like East Indian Companies, Paradox should consider adding tribute action for all countries with trade companies owning any provinces in India or Indonesia if they wish to conduct legal trade with China. Either country or their trade company might pay tribute. If trade company is paying tribute, then the amount would be deducted from the amount of money made in any trade nodes to which provinces assigned to the trade company belonged.

Furthermore, legal trade could be restricted to one of any trade nodes containing any owned province of the Chinese empire. The trade company and burgher estate is sure to chafe at this restriction over the time, perhaps represented by a special attribute possibly called "Trade Imbalance" shown in Trade tab within Country interface. "Trade imbalance" may be slowly increased by factors such as having Free Trade idea, a number of merchants, number of provinces owned by trade company in either India or Indonesia, size of navy relative to China, etc. There may also be factors decreasing it possibly via certain policies enacted by China that might mollify the trade company and/or burghers, though on their own accord and the disparity in naval strength between country and China.

In this way, @Trin Tragula could design events revolving around the trade to make trade companies in these region more interesting. If "Trade imbalance" becomes too high, burghers and/or trade companies might press their country's ruler to take some certain action to rectify it. Failure to do so might reduce burgher loyalty and/or opinion of trade company or some sort of consequence.

There could also be potentially disruptive events such as disputes over the tributary status after 1750 which might give the trade company's overlord a casus belli to force open the trade, even earlier than the time of Opium Wars. A few key points:
  1. Because this is before the industrial revolution, there might be a greater downside in attempting an early Opium War against China. It would obviously require a powerful navy to impose blockade on the coast and control of certain coastal provinces of strategic importance as defined in CB to achieve a satisfactory war score.
  2. CB might allow for demanding one coastal province but nothing else, in addition to demanding permission for your trade company to trade without a need for tribute.
  3. The event granting this special CB can only fire if Chinese empire controlled a given number of both coastal provinces and provinces that produces tea and/or possibly other important trade goods. The country receiving this CB must also have a trade company operating in either India or Indonesia and owned a given number of provinces within either region. The country must also have a merchant in the
  4. Again, a downside is need for an expensive navy powerful enough to blockade the coasts and an army strong enough to occupy certain coastal provinces, an expensive undertaking that have to be somehow justified.
  5. There is, of course, a real risk of having the lucrative market completely closed to the company for an extended period if war was lost. This might manifest in having merchant completely banned from the trade node in China and some kind of negative modifiers on trade nodes to which company provinces belonged.
  6. Clearly, risk/reward ratio in considering whether to start the war for forcing open the trade have to be balanced for gameplay reason.

Anyway, a rough draft of what I've thought up after reading the post. Might need some tweaking and such later on but that's it for me. Feel free to fire away your feedback on this.
 
Now if only trade companies were vassals that grew on their own based on how much help you give them.

This would be a good way to let trade companies have zero autonomy without being monstrously unbalanced. There'd have to be a serious improvement in subject AI economic management first, though: if trade companies aggressively threw away money the way AI colonial nations currently do, and on top of that started stupid wars that required them to be rescued by the overlord, most players would rather own the land directly as bare territories.
 
if trade companies aggressively threw away money the way AI colonial nations currently do, and on top of that started stupid wars that required them to be rescued by the overlord, most players would rather own the land directly as bare territories.
It would also be nice and helpful if it was up to the player to decide which province goes to which colonial subject/company, or if it goes to anyone at all.
 
Why isn't Japan part of Ming tributary in 1444? They were part of tributary system at least until 17th century. Can't think top of my head if they sent tributes in 18th century though.

The system seems more befitting for horde tributary than cinocentric tributary system..

ps. come to think of it Manchus are missing from tributaries, too.

Ashikaga Yoshinori broke of relations with Ming in the 1420s, I'm quite sure no tributary relationship can be verified in sources until like the 1490s...
Also in 1444 there was no shôgun (since Yoshikatsu died in 1443 and his successor was 8 years old, thus not yet of age) that the Ming could have bestowed the King-of-Japan title upon. AFAIK, their relationship was mostly based on Mings interest in having the Japanese shôgun combat the wakô piracy which led them to bestowing the king-of-Japan title to the shôgun.

Either way, I am quite sure Paradox did exclude Japan for gameplay/balance reasons (maybe because it messes with the daimyô-system?), but incidentally they got this right.

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I think the same about the sinocentric tribute relationship vs. the actual game mechanics. But its a game, and vassals, protectorates aren't exactly functioning like they did in reality either, right? Heck, there were no "nations" in 1444 to begin with...etc.
 
Uh, the Ottomans had quite a few tributary states: Moldavia, Wallachia, Hungary, the Crimean Khanate, Algeria, Morea, Serbia, Bosnia, the Turkish beyliks, etc.

The Ottomans are unusual. At first they're much like a horde, but later they settle down into a regular state, but they kept their tributaries until the 19th Century.