• 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.

EU4 - Development Diary - 31st of March 2020

Hello everyone! Today’s Development Diary will be focusing on features part of the Emperor expansion. These features aim to enrich the gameplay surrounding the Holy Roman Empire, both for Emperor and Princes part of the Empire.

You might have noticed that there’s been some quite heavy changes to a very old interface in our Developer Clash.

upload_2020-3-31_11-57-4.png


So now let’s go through these changes today. First up is the new reforms. We wanted to accomodate more playstyles than simply always uniting the Empire under the Emperor. So the Reforms have been divided up to three types, Common, Decentralized and Centralized. In order to access either the Decentralized or Centralized path you need to first get some of the Common reforms. Specifically you need to establish a permanent diet for the Empire.

The common reforms are

Call for Reichsreform
  • -5% Construction and Development cost in Imperial Provinces.
  • Enables Imperial Ban
Institute Reichsregiment
  • Emperor gets +1 Diplomat, +1 Diplomatic Reputation
  • Imperial Provinces gets -2 Unrest
Absolute Reichsstabilität
  • Imperial Provinces gets -25% State Maintenance
Enact Gemeiner Pfennig
  • The Emperor gets 0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  • All Princes gets +1 Diplomatic Reputation.
Perpetual Diet
  • +50% Imperial Authority Gain
  • Establishes the Perpetual Diet in a Free City.
Create the Landsknechtwesen
  • Mercenaries with home in HRE are cheaper for HRE Members by 25%.
Ewiger Landfriede
  • Emperor gets 0.5 Monthly Prestige
  • All members gets -5% Tech cost
  • Imperial Provinces gets +10% Institutional Spread.
  • Disables internal HRE Wars
After you’ve taken the 5th reform, Perpetual Diet, you can go into one of the specialized paths. However these are mutually exclusive and you can’t go into both.

upload_2020-3-31_11-57-25.png


Following is the Decentralized Reforms

Establish the Reichstag Collegia
  • +3 Free Cities
Expand the Gemeiner Pfennig
  • Emperor gets +100 Manpower per Prince
  • Electors gets 200 Manpower per Prince
  • Imperial Princes gets 10% Friendly Movement speed.
Embrace Rechenschaft Measures
  • +1% Imperial Authority per Prince.
  • +1 Max Electors
Geteilte Macht
  • Electors get +0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  • -5% Development cost in Imperial Provinces
Reichskrieg
  • Emperor & Electors get +500 Manpower Per Prince when at war against Imperial Enemies
  • Enables Reichskrieg Diplomatic Interaction.


Following is the Centralized Reforms

Reform the Hofgericht
  • Emperor gets -10% Core Construction cost
Curtail the Imperial Estates
  • +25% Imperial Authority
Proclaim Erbkaisertum
  • +25% Imperial Authority
  • HRE becomes hereditary
Revoke the Privilegia
  • +25% Imperial Authority
  • Princes & Free Cities gets -10% Stability Cost
  • Members are given a choice to stay within the empire and become a vassal under the Emperor or to leave the empire.
Renovatio Imperii
  • The Emperor unites the empire under the Holy Roman Empire tag.

The centralized reforms are based on the old vanilla reforms to unite the empire with some slight changes. The idea is still that you are uniting the empire under one monarch. The Decentralized path has more of a focus on a strong united empire by devolving some of the responsibilities and powers to the Electors.

upload_2020-3-31_11-57-49.png


The last reform on the Decentralized path might not unite the entire Empire in one tag under the Emperor, but it does give the Emperor a powerful tool to call upon the entire empire in a war against the empire’s enemies. This costs 25 Imperial Authority.

If you become Emperor and the previous Emperor has gone into a path you didn’t want, you can now also revoke reforms once per Emperor. This act costs 50 Imperial Authorities just like adding a reform.



To give the Empire a bit of life we’ve implemented something we call the Imperial Incidents. These are big dynamic historical events that affect huge swaths of Europe. From the Burgundian Inheritance, the German Peasant War, the Question of the Swiss to the Dutch Revolt. In total we’ve made 13 of these.

upload_2020-3-31_11-58-3.png


Every single prince will be allowed to weigh in on the issues at hand. For instance, in a case where Burgundy is properly invited to join the Empire, Princes at the border worried about the duke’s ambitions might not want to permit that.

However the Emperor still gets to pick what option he wants to happen, but if it goes against the diet it will hurt the unity of the empire considerably. The Emperor will either gain or lose imperial authority depending on how the diet positions itself in the incident. It calculates this relative between your pick and the option with most support (besides your pick so if you picked the most supported one it takes the second most picked). Princes are worth 0.2 Imperial Authority each and Electors are worth 1 Imperial Authority. Besides the Imperial Authority there’s also opinion changes with members of the empire depending on what you pick.



Together with these new features we’ve done quite a few balance changes. First let’s cover how things are added to the empire. We don’t want you to keep a “reserve of provinces to add” in order to burst through the reforms of the HRE. We want a “healthy” empire is what leads to progress within it. So when you join all legible provinces gets added at once and a lump sum of 10 IA is given. You can add more provinces as you conquer but this is also done with all provinces all at once in the HRE screen instead for one by one. This does also mean that when the Reformation hits and if left unchecked, it becomes a serious blow to the authority of the emperor.

Of course we’re giving the Emperor some more ways to garden his Empire though, for starters there are now 12 Free Cities at start which gives a good baseline of Imperial Authority generation. Overall there’s a lot more princes & fabricating claims within the empire is 50% more expensive. This together means it’s easier to keep the empire above the 25 princes limit for a lot longer. We’ve also made it easier for the Emperor to enforce peace within the Empire by being able to ignore the opinion requirement so you no longer only have the Imperial Ban as an option.

We’ve also added a Force into HRE CB that the Emperor can use. Nations that have their capital in the same continent and that borders the Empire can be forced in through this treaty.



That’s it for today! Next development diary will be two things you’ve seen hinted here and there from time to time in various screenshots from previous development diaries and in the dev clash.


Edit: Since I keep getting asked this no matter how many times I try to clarify....
You do not get 10 IA for adding provinces to the empire, that's only for when a new prince joins the empire. You do not get IA for adding provinces to the Empire.
 
Last edited:
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Then what's the point of adding provinces to the HRE?

Imperial provinces can get local bonuses. That's why you might add them.

EDIT:
Call for Reichsreform
  • -5% Construction and Development cost in Imperial Provinces.
[...]

Institute Reichsregiment
  • Imperial Provinces gets -2 Unrest
[...]

Absolute Reichsstabilität
  • Imperial Provinces gets -25% State Maintenance
[...]

Ewiger Landfriede
  • Imperial Provinces gets +10% Institutional Spread.
[...]

Expand the Gemeiner Pfennig
  • Imperial Princes gets 10% Friendly Movement speed.
[...]

Geteilte Macht
  • -5% Development cost in Imperial Provinces
 
If HRE get a Peace of Westphalia, can any Muslim or even Pagan countries, for example be the Emperor?
 
I have a non related idea, I already posted it on the EU4 subreddit.
Forming a nation out of a subject (maybe it makes more sense if it was just for PUs). For example, say you had Milan as a PU and you conquered all provinces to form Italy for Milan. Shouldn't you be able to form it out of Milan. So Milan became Italy.
Would be nice if you could make them form as subjects, and all it takes is one line of code to be changed, but it's done to prevent exploits and slow world conquests.
Euh, how weak do you want players in the HRE to be? You get more expensive claims (slower conquest), more unrest on conquest (cf demand mechanic), very bad relations with members (cf demand mechanic), more AE (slower conquest), more coalition members (compared to having something like Irish minors) and improving relations in the HRE to make people have less AE opinion of you is already troublesome. The HRE is already extremely hostile to conquer in. Do you guys perhaps want to encourage a tiny nation like Nassua to no-CB some random minor far away, integrate that nation, expand in that region till you are big enough to hold your emperorship, and unite the HRE that way? Because else you're just sitting there the whole game doing absolute nothing else but waiting for AE and relations.

I also want to stress that the diplomatic opinion hit of the demand unlawful territory is already very, very punishing. You lose alliances, it makes vassals harder to get to 190 opinion to integrate, forget about convincing electors, and some nations will suddenly care about your AE and will consequently join the coalition against you. Because of this, diplomats on improving relations are crucial. With more members, it becomes way harder to keep relations ok, and now you also want everyone to spend more diplo time on spying...

I recommend introducing a mechanic that encourages players and AI to release nations. Releasing nations is now one of the worst things to do: costs a lot of WS, costs lots of diplo points, and it creates a very lengthy treaty. That way, the AI will keep each other shattered, and if you happen to be in a losing war, they'll try to shatter you.

Also: the HRE is know for its beautiful borders. However, everyone except for the emperor still must care about coring distance here. I can provide you with loads of examples of exclaves and enclaves in the HRE. Even current Cologne can work as an example. So please, you can make HRE provinces not care about coring distance, for gameplay and historical accuracy's sake?
Would be nice if the AI made you return recently got provinces in coalition wars more, as that's what one of the leagues against LOUIS XIV did. However the HRE should be hard to conquer, if we don't have tags being released on monarch death then there's few other options to help it down a historic path. Vassalising people and then slowly integrating them was already a valid strat, as well as allying the emperor to avoid the unlawful territory demand
 
Awesome! Looking forward to playing Imperial games again!
 
Imperial provinces can get local bonuses. That's why you might add them.

EDIT:

Those bonuses are worthless as the Emperor is already heavily incentivised to not hold onto any territory the he takes, instead immediately spitting it out again as vassals that are now part of the HRE. I'm do not quite as heavily lean into this as other players (for example budgetmonk), but even for me it is an absolute no-brainer to release Transylvania and Croatia the moment I integrate Hungary. With no more IA gained for adding provinces to the HRE, this will become even more important to the emperor to quickly go through the reforms.
 
This makes me wonder about what are the ways to minmax a decentralized HRE where every prince is a player.... like which prince/national ideas are best positioned to benefit from Emperor modifiers or transferring all trade to the prince with the highest trade profit, them subsidising everyone....
 
I like the idea of centralised and decentralised versions being different, but currently the centralised version seems MUCH stronger.

Decentralised:
-Risk of losing Emperorship even after full reforms
-No defensive benefit from Princes
-Option to call Princes to an offensive war using 25 IA after 5th decentralised reform

Centralised:
-Guaranteed Emperorship after 3rd reform
-Automatic calling of Princes to all defensive wars after 4th reform
-Automatic calling of Princes to all offensive wars after 4th reform

Initially I assumed that the decentralised version would have resulted in the vassal swarm and the centralised version would have been the united HRE, but it seems that the centralised path got all the candy and the decentralised path ended up as slightly buffed normal HRE.

I think at the very least the decentralised path should at least make all the princes automatically joining defensive wars with the Emperor at some reform level, and also give some bonuses to re-election if the guaranteed re-election is off the table for that branch. It would still be the significantly weaker option, to make it a viable choice it should have something unique that the other tree doesn't have.
 
Will you guys be adding the ability to improve relations with the electors and HRE princes similar to how you can currently do it for allies, rivals, subjects, etc in the macro builder?
 
Those bonuses are worthless as the Emperor is already heavily incentivised to not hold onto any territory the he takes, instead immediately spitting it out again as vassals that are now part of the HRE. I'm do not quite as heavily lean into this as other players (for example budgetmonk), but even for me it is an absolute no-brainer to release Transylvania and Croatia the moment I integrate Hungary. With no more IA gained for adding provinces to the HRE, this will become even more important to the emperor to quickly go through the reforms.
By those arguments, you'd add the provinces of Croatia and Transylvania to the Empire in order to spit them out as princes. That's an intrinsic reason right there.
 
Like the changes to how estates work, I LOVE the way these changes manage the impressive feat of making EU4's systems deeper but simpler, but also easier to understand at the same time. It'd have been so easy to just splurge loads of new things and features onto the game without thinking about how that might affect gameplay and accessibility for newcomers. I think everyone from EU4 newcomers to veterans with 1000's of hours under their belts will appreciate these changes! :)
 
Enact Gemeiner Pfennig
  • The Emperor gets 0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  • All Princes gets +1 Diplomatic Reputation.

Expand the Gemeiner Pfennig
  • Emperor gets +100 Manpower per Prince
  • Electors gets 200 Manpower per Prince
  • Imperial Princes gets 10% Friendly Movement speed.
Geteilte Macht
  • Electors get +0.5 Tax Income per Prince.
  • -5% Development cost in Imperial Provinces
Reichskrieg
  • Emperor & Electors get +500 Manpower Per Prince when at war against Imperial Enemies
  • Enables Reichskrieg Diplomatic Interaction.

These static modifications are crap. Im lategame, 0.5 ducats per 60 princes makes just 2 ducats per month, just enough to keep 4 cannons. Same with Manpower. Please make this modifications variable e.g. 5% from Princes Tax income or 5% Manpower from Princes Manpower...
 
Last edited:
@Groogy Is there any changes to outsiders wanting to add their provinces to the HRE? Today, all you have to do is get on the good side of the current Emperor and not having more than 100 development total.
 
Last edited:
Maybe we shouldn't gain IA from new prince whose lands are already in the HRE to avoid exploits (allowing OPM to be fully annexed then make them released)
Or is it intended?
 
You don't get 10 IA for adding provinces after you've joined. So adding 1 province here or there by snaking in creative ways won't give you any advantage.

Can you then please be more specific how it works?
Is it like a button that if you click onces, giving 10 IA and then always adds all provinces automatically (even after) or something?