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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
 
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I must say I am a little surprised. I thought for sure that the decentralized path would end in the vassal swarm and the centralized path a unified HRE but instead the former gets basically nothing really worth mentioning. This was quite a strange decision.

I like some of the other changes to IA gain and so forth though.
 
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Nice DD and a very promising DLC. I am waiting for it. :)
One question: Does the Religious (or the "Thirty Years") War remain as it was?
 
I'm getting really hyped for this expansion.

Couple of minor questions. Does the one reform revoked per emperor also apply to peace deals? Otherwise you would be ale to revoke by beating up OPMs then forcing them to accept your surrender?

Also will the requirements for the Voltaire's Nightmare achievement be made harder as there are a lot more tags in the empire now?
 
I'm looking forward to some HRE action.

What if the decentralisation path was simply a bit easier (lower Imperial Authority cost per reform)? Might simulate the fact that princes would be less likely to oppose measures that strengthen the Empire and mostly retain their autonomy. I.e. a good option for where you don't want to focus all your efforts on generating Imperial Authority (or aren't really able to dominate the Empire significantly) and so take a different path. Out of game then represents a strategic trade-off between effort and reward.
 
The decentralized reforms make no sense at the moment, because the central ones are simply much better. I have a vassal swarm that I can use at any time and I can transfer tradepower that generates additional income. if i don't want the vassal swarm anymore, i can press a button to integrate everything. On the other hand i have 3 ducats more income per month, arround 30k manpower and have to handle the re-election. Every few years i can start an imperial war, which behaves like the vassal swarm. For me and some others the decentralized way looks worse because I have to pass one more reform to have my vassal swarm that always has to load with IA before i can use them and have to handle Erbkaisertum. Because of the transfer of trading power, you make even less income than then the few ducats additionally.

Centralization means that the individual princes first give the emperor their rights such as tax law, manpower or forcelimit(% range) and in the last step they lose their complete sovereignty (annexed).
Decentralization means that they continue to retain their sovereignty, but that the emperor, for example, represents the empire in foreign policy. Therefore I see the vassal swarm more on the decentralized side (last reform).

With this change, the player can decide whether he wants to have a vassal swarm, which he does not annex by simply push a button; or additional tax income, manpower and forcelimit and in the last step the complete annexation with known problems like corruption
 
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I know that I almost always preorder games and DLC, but this is one where I'm really exited. I hope to be able to order this DLC soon)
 
Love the new HRE interface, looks great!

and... I apologize for off topic but could you please fix the borders of Moldavia? You dont have to move anything or add any new provinces, just change a few pixels on the map. The border between Moldavia and Bessarabia should follow Prut river.
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A bit off topic, but not sure what mod it is and having Bor as a province in east Serbia is awful considering the city was founded in early 1900's
 
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.
Before reading this DD, I thought it was a foregone conclusion that the common reforms would end with hereditary control, and then each branch would get one of possible endgame playstyles as a capstone. I.e. centralization ending in forming the HRE tag with some juicy bonuses (like a banging set of National Ideas) to tempt players away from the OPness of the inifinte vassal swarm. Honestly curious, what was the design logic for concentrating all the best reforms (permanent emperorship, vassal swarm & super blobbing) in the same group?
 
Force join Peace Treaty goes by warscore as if they would be vassalized, can only be used if they have valid provinces to enter into the empire and if you used the Force Join CB.

Will the Casus Belli only be enabled for nations small enough to be added, so one doesn't have to manually do total dev math before declaring war?

Even so, you could theoretically get in a situation where you are able to declare a war with this Casus Belli, but due to expired modifiers or reduced admin efficiency, not actually be able to demand it in the peace treaty due to the warscore cost going over 100%?
 
Nice DD and a very promising DLC. I am waiting for it. :)
One question: Does the Religious (or the "Thirty Years") War remain as it was?
Was just about to ask the same :)

Would be nice if countries like Russia and Ottomans would be less decisive in this war...

PS: DLC looks amazing so far! And happy that Konstanz made it into the game.
 
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Decentralized final reform should be the vassal swarm.
 
The Force into HRE CB sounds really interesting. This is a solid upgrade and will make the game much more interesting if you play in Europe!

I hope you guys still consider changing the Catholicism localisations that you spoke about last Dev Diary as that was the biggest issue that everyone seemed to have. I hope you guys could get back to us on that!

This expansion is really coming together!
 
Small QoL request: could you please make the HRE interface a bit bigger? I would like to embrace all my princes on a single glance, and not having to scroll their list :) Same goes for Free Cities. Thanks!