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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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Chinese and Japanese dynasties should work the same way. It's weird to see Hosokawa without a Hosokawa ruler.


All nations with dynasty names as country names should have either a perma-dynasty or the name of it should change with the new dynasty (something like Muslims in CK2).
 
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This looks neat and all, but a buff to the Ottomans? Was that really needed? Historical flavour is one thing, but this is not just a buff, it's hands down the best government type in the game in 1.18.

if you don't nerf poland's godlike national ideas i wouldn't say ottoman sultanate gov. form as a buff. ;)
 
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It occurs to me that we know so much about this next expansion that not knowing the name isn't nearly as important.
 
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You don't but you still get an Ottoman successor (see the second picture).

Yeah I got that, but it's the "Heir magically appear when you're 30, not earlier, not later" that bugs me.

Now don't get me wrong, this detail is completely insignificant, compared with the hype all last DD gave me. I love everything I read so far :)

(Yeah, I'm that kind of guy who answers a post 5 pages later)
 
I'm a little disappointed at this DD, honestly. I like the Ottoman Sultunate and harem Idea, but it's not as if the basis for the mechanic was particular to just the Ottomans (not to mention I was expecting this DD to be about the Hapsburgs and touch on better dynastic mechanics, so I was also a bit let down). Not to mention the Ottomans are already really powerful as it is.

Chinese and Japanese dynasties should work the same way. It's weird to see Hosokawa without a Hosokawa ruler.

While I agree, there are three problems: 1); none of the Japanese cultures have dynasty names relevant to the period, 2); that won't really stop the Ashikaga from simply placing their dynasty on a Daimyo's throne (and if we add in the historical occurrence of an adopted Daimyo changing their name to their new family, it would completely negate the whole purpose of the action), and 3); it wouldn't be able to properly represent stuff that happened like Shoni -> Ryuzoji -> Nabeshima, Hosokawa -> Miyoshi, Shiba -> Mogami, Toki -> Saito, etc, due to a deficiency in tags (and I would simply prefer a maximum of one tag per province to cut down on lag). Maybe a solution would be to have each tag represent the particularly powerful families of that province, and have retainer families/a retainer mechanic for the Daimyo Gov. that could help or hurt said Daimyo?
 
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Excellent dev diary !
Just there is something I wondering, I think I read somewhere one day that you wanted to remove special government (so Americans republics were supressed) but after you add a new government type especially for ottomans.

I miss something ? just why the americans republic get supressed then ? (Because people pays for that in the DLC american dream I think) [myself included]

Changes in the EU4 team shifted their opinion on that, I guess? Still, it would be really nice to get the American Republic back since many people paid for it (I had a petition for it a while back that got over 100 something signatures) - not to mention if we have the English Monarchy and Ottoman Sultunate, I think that the American Republic qualifies perfectly in terms of uniqueness.
 
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I'm assuming so, but: can you select this government type with custom nations?
 
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.

So abdication is by default 'bad'? Charles V abdicating in favour of his son Philips II didn't shake the foundations of the dynasty. So that's a bit weird. I guess it is hard to distinguish game-wise between a regular and a more forced abdication :) Still, interesting feature.
 
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I'm curious, if the Ottomans are converted from Islam, do they keep these harem event mechanics?
 
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So the Ottomans get to freely choose between multiple possible heirs. Assuming that each of the options has stats generated in the same way as any other potential monarch(we see one of them has stats of 4/5/3, so they clearly aren't generated by the republic candidate model), and that they can freely choose the best option, this would seem to imply that the Ottomans will tend to have better rulers than other monarchies. Are there corresponding downsides to this government? In a game where Monarch Points (and therefore ruler stats) are king, how large would such a drawback need to be to maintain a remote semblance of balance?
 
So the Ottomans get to freely choose between multiple possible heirs. Assuming that each of the options has stats generated in the same way as any other potential monarch(we see one of them has stats of 4/5/3, so they clearly aren't generated by the republic candidate model), and that they can freely choose the best option, this would seem to imply that the Ottomans will tend to have better rulers than other monarchies. Are there corresponding downsides to this government? In a game where Monarch Points (and therefore ruler stats) are king, how large would such a drawback need to be to maintain a remote semblance of balance?
Trin Tragula has insinuated that there are other events that represent the intrigue involved in the decision.

So for example your chosen favorite heir might get murdered by one of the other not-chosen kids / kids' mothers / whatever, which would... do something, I'm not sure what. Make you choose again? Automatically install a different heir with worse stats and maybe even Average claim (stretching definition of "claim" here but having an appropriate mechanical impact)? Dash your Stability in the process? Who knows.
 
While I agree, there are three problems: 1); none of the Japanese cultures have dynasty names relevant to the period, 2); that won't really stop the Ashikaga from simply placing their dynasty on a Daimyo's throne (and if we add in the historical occurrence of an adopted Daimyo changing their name to their new family, it would completely negate the whole purpose of the action), and 3); it wouldn't be able to properly represent stuff that happened like Shoni -> Ryuzoji -> Nabeshima, Hosokawa -> Miyoshi, Shiba -> Mogami, Toki -> Saito, etc, due to a deficiency in tags (and I would simply prefer a maximum of one tag per province to cut down on lag). Maybe a solution would be to have each tag represent the particularly powerful families of that province, and have retainer families/a retainer mechanic for the Daimyo Gov. that could help or hurt said Daimyo?
As for the second problem, doesn't the Daimyo government type prevent enforcing dynasty? If not, it's more of an oversight than a feature, and could be easily fixed.
 
As for the second problem, doesn't the Daimyo government type prevent enforcing dynasty? If not, it's more of an oversight than a feature, and could be easily fixed.

Nope, a common complaint has been that the Shogunate is able to enforce their dynasty on everyone they wish and turn the Daimyo into complacent vassals. Heck, the Shogunate even existing as a power in 1444 is pretty ahistorical in of itself.
 
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.
I don't really like that, since as far as I am aware abdication wasn't really a thing in this era. At most you got get a regent (who might well be your heir) ruling for you if you got incapable or were insane).
Will the AI use this? And if so is it then easy to mod out?
Just because you've picked a favorite does not mean that son can consider himself safe ;)
Given what will normally happen to non-succeeding sons I don't think you can fault them (or their mothers) for not giving up on securing the succession just because they father prefers someone else right now.
What happens if you have killed all your brothers and then die yourself before siring a son?
 
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