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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of June 2016

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Hello and welcome to today's development diary for Europa Universalis IV. It's actually a well earned(?) day off for me but I'm doing a once unthinkable thing and working a bit from home. Last week I said we would take a look at a very influential dynasty of the time period. Sorry to disappoint all the Velikopermsky and Dandani fans out there, but I had the Osmanoglus on my mind.

It would be an understatement to say that the Ottomans gave the world a good shaking in this time period. Furthermore, they are one of the more commonly played nations in EUIV. We wanted to give them a little something to bring out their unique flavour since it was always a shame that they are a run-of-the-mill Sultanate. It has also been pointed out on numerous occasions the oddity of a situation where you have the Ottoman nation..without an Osmanoglu at the helm.

So to that end, in the still-unnamed upcoming expansion we have added a unique government type for them: The Ottoman Sultanate.

The Ottoman Sultanate does not generate heirs like normal monarchies do. The ruler of the Ottoman Sultanate will have their own Harem to ensure the dynasty lives on. At the age of 30, your ruler will select one of his sons to be the heir to the throne. They will, of course, be of your dynasty

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So an Ottoman Sultanate shall always be blessed by the strong line of Osmanoglus. That is to say unless the Sultan dies without an heir. In that case, they'll still end up with an Osmanoglu. "Blessed" can be a relative term here.

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There are a couple dozen events accompanying this unique government type to simulate the power struggle and intrigue of such a succession system and should add a couple of fangs to that already formidable Ottomans.

While this is unique to the Ottomans, any modders out there can easily allow this for other government types with the has_harem = yes line.

I feel like we're on a roll when it comes to governments and rulers so here's another thing for today's Development Diary. Abdication.

Yes, it has long been a requested feature in Europa Universalis. When Enrique or his low-stat kind just refuses to die you can abdicate and let your next in line take over. This requires you to have an of-age heir and to have either ruled for 25 years or be 60+ years old. It will come with a considerable hit to your legitimacy/unity and prestige but I think we've all had times where we wanted our monarch to Die Please Die.

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Ottoman Sultanate and Abdication are both paid features in the upcoming expansion which we have magically managed to keep unleaked name-wise.

I've been mentioning a lot of paid features lately but it's good to remind ourselves that with all the paid expansions come free bugfixes and features from the accompanying patch. A small change that will be coming up in 1.18 that I want to share is to do with succession wars. I'm not too happy with how right now, they have two conclusions: Either the new overlord keeps their union or the nation fighting them over it take leadership over the union for themselves. Now, we will add a peace option which simply breaks the union for all parties involved.

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Simple, sensible, and added free in 1.18 for those times where you just want to keep the status quo. Warscore cost scales with the junior partner's size.

Happy midsummer everyone, I'm off to....oh, right, I need to tease upcoming Diaries. Hrmm~ Well, we've touched a lot on rulers but would you believe it, we're not quite done with the changes in the throne room. We'll come to that in the future. As for next week, we'll switch it up on the battlefield. See you then!
 
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As if Kebab needed to be buffed any further. :p
Also please add an abdication feature to CKII aswell.

It's basically there, you can commit suicide. Much more fitting for the like of Enrique.

Will this event change when Constantinople is renamed?

Probably not, I don't think you get "dynamic" references in the flavor events. I just brushed over the localization files, but you can easily check for yourself if there are some references at europa/localisation/flavor_events_*.yml (open with Notepad++ or similar)

I guess the most you could do is make a couple versions of the event for different capitals, like one version of the event if the capital is in Edirne, one if it's Constantinople?

Sigh. I would go so far as to provide him the goods (AKA Byz tech group, fixed flavor, regnal names, events) and he could pick and choose.

Personally, I feel the game faction does not accurately draw enough on the long history and vibrant culture that the Byzantine Empire has.

We better be getting corresponding Byzantine flavor. Ottomans get so much flavor already.

No offence, but Byz has plenty of flavour, compared to most of the nations on the map. Second of all - Byz has probably the most flavour out of all tags that are in the game for 10 years, overcome only by Bur, but they tend to live for around 20 years. At the same time there are tags that were actually meaningful with one or two events.

For example - Brandenburg/Prussia, Scotland have roughly the same amount of flavour events. Saxony has one tag specific event and one that's goes for whoever owns Leipzig (I think), Naples has a third of Byz flavour.

Not to mention the fact that there is fair share of Byzantium connected events, some for specific tags, I think Venice has some?, some more widespread.

Besides - events are in my opinion one of the easiest to things to mod in, all it takes is getting around the concept of MTTH and editing the event file and localization file.
 
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There is something that is bothering me about abdication. It can be use by all monarchy, right ?
So what about monarchy that disallow abdication ? Like the french monarchy ?
 
Could we please have a feature where a larger and more powerful, Junior Party of a Union could reverse the situation? Rather akin to England and Scotland or Hannover and England.

I agree, I'd also like the option as a player to switch to playing as my PU junior and make them the Senior at the same time; basically the same as changing your primary title in CK2.
 
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No offence, but Byz has plenty of flavour, compared to most of the nations on the map. Second of all - Byz has probably the most flavour out of all tags that are in the game for 10 years, overcome only by Bur, but they tend to live for around 20 years. At the same time there are tags that were actually meaningful with one or two events.

For example - Brandenburg/Prussia, Scotland have roughly the same amount of flavour events. Saxony has one tag specific event and one that's goes for whoever owns Leipzig (I think), Naples has a third of Byz flavour.

Not to mention the fact that there is fair share of Byzantium connected events, some for specific tags, I think Venice has some?, some more widespread.

Besides - events are in my opinion one of the easiest to things to mod in, all it takes is getting around the concept of MTTH and editing the event file and localization file.

As usual, you are arguing the wrong point. Can't tell if it's intentional deflection or not. But, ultimately, it really isn't about the number of events or about buffing Byzantium (they are certainly playable if you know what you're doing). It is about the actual content of the events. "The Empire runs on paper" represents NOTHING about the Empire. It doesn't tell stories of the Empire's grand past. It doesn't highlight the richness of Byzantine culture, now crumbling to dust. This is the Empire whose fall often signifies the end of the Middle Ages and the definitive emergence of the Ottomans as a world power. There needs to be PROPER representation, not half-assed, lazy events that don't actually say anything or tell you anything about this all-too-often glazed over Empire that was in fact ridiculously important to world history. They could easily replace one or two of the really generic events with something actually meaningful, and it would change virtually nothing with balance. Like I said, I would offer up the work I have done. The entirety of my unreleased "Empire of Angels" mod is available to them.

Now, I might suggest an event or decision where the Empire rediscovers Greek Fire (improved army/navy tradition?), restores the Theodosian Walls (+1 fort str @ Constantinople?), or reestablishes the University of Constantinople (builds a university in Constantinople). I have already built a few. They don't even have to be that great, but they would add to the whole point of Purple Phoenix, which is an alternate reality where the Empire survives. Hence, "Purple Phoenix".

Also, I'm sick of seeing the regnal numbers be completely wrong, like there being a Romanos I, when there already was a Romanos I like 500 years ago. It should be Romanos V. There's also some misspelled or Latinized names that don't belong. I have a complete list of regnal names and correct numbers already in my game (including every legitimate Emperor and Empress from 330 AD to 1453), so that things like that don't happen. I also have a list of many of the greatest Byzantine families, and names that are either contemporary Byzantine (in that they include names of Byzantine people, from peasant to Emperor) who actually lived during this period, as well as a few foreign names that would have been deemed acceptable by native Byzantines.

Likewise, the Byzantines get the shaft when it comes to their military units. They get things like Streltsy and Cossacks (military units of the completely wrong culture), when they should be given Spatharioi and Kataphraktoi. I can accept the later units being adapted to west or east to represent increased globalization, but the early units are painfully ahistorically named.

And yes, it is easy to do mod-wise, so why not do it officially?! When you release an official version of the game (especially an historical game), you should at least try to get things somewhat right. And I think Paradox prides itself on getting their history right (I mean, why would they bother with some of the barely touched upon African or Asian countries, which even a lot of historians didn't even know existed?). But in the case of this Empire, they really dropped the ball. They could at least do a little something to properly represent such a prominent, fan favorite faction -- especially when they keep piling on the additions to the Ottomans.
 
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oh my god shut up about Byzantium it shouldn't exist and the fact that it has so much flavour while empires that were ACTUALLY RELEVANT like Qing, the Mughals, Persia, Russia, Prussia, etc have LESS than the quasi-state that's basically a corpse is really criminal.
 
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don't be rude to one another. treat people with kindness and respect

Oh, the irony.

But, really. Telling me to shut up without offering a rebuttal tells me that you can't find any valid argument against what I'm saying. Spending time to properly represent a faction's history is entirely important to this game. Like I said, why bother including factions that nobody knows about if "Qing, the Mughals, Persia, Russia, Prussia, etc" are the only ones deserving of proper fluff. Please.
 
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oh my god shut up about Byzantium it shouldn't exist and the fact that it has so much flavour while empires that were ACTUALLY RELEVANT like Qing, the Mughals, Persia, Russia, Prussia, etc have LESS than the quasi-state that's basically a corpse is really criminal.
Retrograde's signiture said:
don't be rude to one another. treat people with kindness and respect

The irony is killing me with laughter...

Edit: ninja'd
 
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It's basically there, you can commit suicide. Much more fitting for the like of Enrique.
Not really. Being able to commit suicide is pretty rare.
 
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I still can't believe the new expansion will come with a considerable amount of changes of gameplay and flavor for the Ottoman Empire. Which makes me very much elated. I will definitely buy this expansion regardless of the cost. :)
 
I have a question. If Italy (1861), Germany (1871), Greece (1832), Romania (1881) etc are. Because the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867) does not exist in the game? It would be a great power rival to consider the Ottomans, Prussia-Germany, Italy, Commonwealth and France. That would be formed with the Austrian and Hungarian territories plus a unique system of government "Dual Monarchy" as well as its related events.
 
I have a question. If Italy (1861), Germany (1871), Greece (1832), Romania (1881) etc are. Because the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867) does not exist in the game? It would be a great power rival to consider the Ottomans, Prussia-Germany, Italy, Commonwealth and France. That would be formed with the Austrian and Hungarian territories plus a unique system of government "Dual Monarchy" as well as its related events.

No sane monarch would form Austria-Hungary, as Austria-Hungary was a weakening of the Austrian throne and the conceding of many rights to Hungarians. All the examples you gave are situations of unification, whereas Austria-Hungarian is basically the beginning of a split between the two nations. It's basically entirely the opposite of a formable nation.
 
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I do feel compelled to ask, but if your King dies without an heir, is their a chance, however slim, for the Ottoman empire just to spontaneously combust into a civil waror time of troubles or whatever? (maybe turn the chance off for players)
 
I do feel compelled to ask, but if your King dies without an heir, is their a chance, however slim, for the Ottoman empire just to spontaneously combust into a civil waror time of troubles or whatever? (maybe turn the chance off for players)

The ruler you get in the event for dying without an heir (second picture) is a pretty poor one.
 
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nope
some of his sons died from natural causes, some of them he had them executed because he thought they would rebel
only selim left
to add to that some WIKIPEDIA!
Şehzade Bayezid (1525 – September 25, 1561) was an Ottoman prince (Turkish: şehzade) as son of Suleiman the Magnificent (also known as the Lawgiver or the Magnificent), 10th Ottoman Sultan, and his legal wife Hürrem Sultan.[1] He was şehzade who attempted to win the throne of the Ottoman Empire. After the death of three of Suleiman's sons, only Bayezid and Selim were alive. By the course of the 1550s, when Suleiman was already in his 60s, a protracted competition for the throne between Bayezid and Selim was evident. Angered by Bayezid's disobedience stemming from around the same years, Bayezid had fallen in disfavour with his father as opposed to his brother Selim (who would eventually succeed as Selim II). After a staged rebellion, which was suppressed in 1559 by Selim (who was further aided by Suleiman and Sokollu Mehmet Pasha) he fled to the neighbouring Safavid Empire, where he was wholeheartedly and lavishly received by Tahmasp I. However, in 1561, upon continuous insistment of Suleiman throughout the entire period of his exile, and by the means of several large payments, Tahmasp allowed Bayezid to be executed by an Ottoman executioner.
There's also youtube videos that explained why Suleiman chose Selim (even though he loves his 1st wife so much and wanted Bayzeid to succeed)