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EU4 - Development Diary - 3rd of April 2018

Good morning all. It's Tuesday and that means time for another Dev Diary. As I mentioned in the last non-alcoholic dev diary, we're going to start looking at changes and features coming with the 1.26 and its accompanying, unannounced expansion.

Before that though, we are currently looking to iron out the kinks with the open beta 1.25.1 hotfix (AI allies deciding that money is more important than friendship and nations sometimes failing to explore for a long time). These fixes will be made, applied to the open beta and rolled out in due time.

Governments

The way governments work have remained mostly unchanged for the duration of Europa Universalis IV, still being almost entirely lifted from EU3. While we have added new government types and their own mechanics such as Theocracy devotion, Steppe Nomads and American Natives, the government progression has remained quite stale, where tech sometimes unlocks a new tier within your government tier and you will switch to it at a cost of 100 ADM if you want its better effects, different election times, absolutism etc.

As a feature in 1.26's accompanying expansion this goes out the window and instead we introduce the system of Government Reforms where you will hand-craft your own government through a series of reforms as the game progresses.

The start of any great project starts with burning a few things down, so to set things straight:

All Monarchy types are merged into one
All Republic types are merged into one
All Theocracies are merged into one
All Tribals are merged into one

The differences we had between government types, for example between Administrative Republic and Oligarchic Republic, or Steppe Nomad and Tribal Despotism, will now be modeled through the reforms

Each Government has a starting reform and maximum number of reforms available. When a Reform value ticks up to a required value, a Governmental reform can be made granting a choice of modifiers and effects and advancing Government reform by 1 step. Each bonus gets incrementally more expensive to increase.

Each reform costs 100 Government Reform Progress, plus 50 for each additional reform. Each nation gains +10 Government Reform Progress towards reform per year, multiplied by 1-(its average autonomy across all provinces. As ever, the numbers we talk about today are subject to balancing and can and likely will change by release, but the net effect is that nations who crack down on autonomy are going to have a far easier time passing their government reforms.

We will cover all the different types of governments over the course of a few dev diaries, but today we will focus on the reforms for a Monarchy.

  • Feudalism vs Autocracy
    • Feudalism: +25% Income from Vassals

    • Autocracy: -10% Unjust Demands
    • [Other Special monarchies]*
  • Hereditary Nobility
    • Enforce privileges: +15% Manpower

    • Quash Noble power: +10% Tax Modifier
  • Bureaucracy
    • Centralize: -0.05 Autonomy reduction

    • Decentralize: +2 Accepted Cultures
  • Growth of Administration
    • Clergy in Administration: +1 [HIDDEN] , +5% base loyalty of Clergy

    • Of Noble Bearing: -10% hire leader cost, +5% base loyalty of Nobility

    • Meritocratic Focus: -10% Advisors Cost

    • Seizure of Power: [Early path for Government type change]
  • Deliberative assembly
    • Parliamentary: Enables Parliaments if Common Sense DLC enabled, else -1 Unrest

    • Royal Decree: +5 max absolutism

    • Aristocratic Court: -0.5 Army Tradition Decay

    • States General: +10% Production Efficiency
  • Absolute Rule v Constitutional
    • l'etat c'est moi: +5 States, -15% State Autonomy

    • Regional Representation - 25% lower autonomy in Territories
  • Separation of powers
    • Political Absolutism: +5 max absolutism, +0.1 Yearly Absolutism

    • Legislative Houses: +1 Possible [HIDDEN]

    • Become a Republic

    • Install Theocratic Government
"What about unique government types?"

The game is host to various different unique government types, with their own effects or mechanics. some examples:

  • Shogunate - +1 Diplomat, -25% Envoy Travel Time, +2 Number of states, +5 Max Absolutism. Dynasty is fixed, Enable Shogun-Daimyo mechanics
  • Daimyo - +10% Morale of Armies, 10% Infantry CA. Dynasty is fixed, enable Daimyo mechanics
  • English Monarchy - +0.5 Yearly Legitimacy, -1 National Unrest, 1 states, -30 absolutism, uses Parliaments
  • Prussian Monarchy - -2 Unrest, -0.02 War exhaustion, +3 Monarch Military skill, uses Militarism.

These special tools will now be modeled by unique reforms. In most cases, it will be a special reform on the first level (Feudalism vs Autocracy) ready-unlocked for said countries. We will also be making the system more flexible in that if you fulfill the criteria for having a certain government type, but previously had no way of switching into it, you will be able to change your reform to pick it up. Changing reforms that have already been passed comes at a cost (currently 10 corruption)

This system is still Work in Progress, so expect changes along the way. Here's a screenshot of it in-game at this current time:

government.png

Return of the pink coder-art and overflowing GUI. Games are like sausages, beware of seeing them made.

Next week we will have more information about this feature as well as looking at another reform path. Which shall we look at, Republics, Theocracies or Tribals? See you next week for it!
 
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Well, and they could carry on all the european wars thanks to loans from italian banks backed by the americn gold, so yeah, the colonies were crucial even to sustain the europan ambitions of the spanish monarchs.
Actually, we crushed France long before the first gold galleon of the colonies came, see battle of Cerignola, Spain's military golden age was starting to develop long before Cortez Conquered the Aztecs...
 
It is also desired that constitutional monarchies and republics (with England monarchy too) will finally receive the Nobility estate.
 
Seems kind of ....lackluster so far. I was excited until I got to the actual bonuses. "Absolute Rule v Constitutional" is how I wished all the other reforms looked like. It has a meaningful choice and some good power behind it. A lot of the other choices have no focus to them. You just pulled them off existing governments and slapped them into this.

Feudalism vs Autocracy for example, Why not add a little more to Feudalism? Maybe a small liberty desire reduction? Annexation cost? Diplo rep? Something that says "I'm taking this because i'll be focusing on vassal expansion over direct coring.". Instead it's another "Oh boy I need to click one of these two irrelevant traits to get to the better tiers". Autocracy could have modifiers to autonomy to support direct conquests. Autocracy and "-10% to unjust demands", this isn't even flavorful. What does a strong absolute government have to do with enforcing war demands?

Interesting idea but please put more effort into this.
 
Seems kind of ....lackluster so far. I was excited until I got to the actual bonuses. "Absolute Rule v Constitutional" is how I wished all the other reforms looked like. It has a meaningful choice and some good power behind it. A lot of the other choices have no focus to them. You just pulled them off existing governments and slapped them into this.

Feudalism vs Autocracy for example, Why not add a little more to Feudalism? Maybe a small liberty desire reduction? Annexation cost? Diplo rep? Something that says "I'm taking this because i'll be focusing on vassal expansion over direct coring.". Instead it's another "Oh boy I need to click one of these two irrelevant traits to get to the better tiers". Autocracy could have modifiers to autonomy to support direct conquests. Autocracy and "-10% to unjust demands", this isn't even flavorful. What does a strong absolute government have to do with enforcing war demands?

Interesting idea but please put more effort into this.
It's also concerning it's all bonuses again, and since some of these appear to be locked at the onset of the game I 'm concerned it may become yet another way for the already powerful to snowball.
 
As I read the first few lines of the diary. Ah, well, that solves the republican dictatorship event bug...well, it could have just been a way to prevent an infinite source of high monarch skill rulers, but this explains why the bug remained unfixed.
 
It would be nice if the name of the government type changed in response to reforms chosen.
 
This change seems on par with what institutions did ... and thus I somewhat fail to see why it's part of the paid expansion when the basic institution system was not. Essentially, it would heavily imply that future small additions to this will not be happening, which I'm sad to think about - it is very much a situation the estates from Cossacks find themselves in. Which means: I dearly hope this will be an in-depth change to all government-related things to make the entire thing more interesting (I'm thinking along the lines of government-related events, close tie-in with estates, and of course idea groups affecting and being affected by the choices made here).

With the criticism out of the way: I'm really looking forward to this one, the potential is great, I do hope it will be realized :D
Also, order of what govt type to see next for me would go: Theocracy>Republic>Tribal
 
I can't believe this. How can you guys treat Spain so badly? Spain was the world power for most of the EU4 frame time. Currently Spain is so underpowered.

Spain should be in EU4 what the UK is in Victoria II: a very powerful enemy that makes the player to have a real opponent.

I'm starting to think you are avoiding giving some love to Spain on purpose.
True representation of the patch 1.9999999999.1
unknown.png
 
Considering many governments outside of Europe operated very differently from the more Western-style ones we see in the teasers, would it be in any way feasible to include things like the Iqta or (fingers crossed) even the Mandala monarchies of Indochina for specific cultures?
 
While I think this seems very interesting, I'm a bit concerned about such a central aspect as government forms being aDLC exclusive feature.

On a more general note this also seems to be a mechanic were you just choose between different bonuses. When was the last time a mechanic was added where your decisions had drawbacks? Institutions? Get them ASAP, nobody in your nation opposes new stuff. Absolutism? Maximize ASAP, nobody cares about the ruler taking all the power.

I wish more meaningful choices and consequences would be added instead of an ever expanding set of bonuses where in the worst case you have to forego one bonus to get another
 
Looking at Estates when wondering how a DLC feature will be handled is pointless. The Problem with Estates is not that they are behind a DLC, but that they are a more complex system that PDS does not want to bother spending time with. The entire feature also never ended up being what they wanted it to be, so I imagine they are not too motivated to deal with it unless they made a major rework, which won't be soon because the marketing no doubt wants them to work on other things. For something unsatisfactory to get a rework it can take a while, as shown by the New World Generation.

Government Reforms though? They are a simpler system that can easily be updated in following patches by adding a few simple lines in the files.
 
They are the company that insists that "Authoritarianism" is the opposition to "egalitarianism." Two words that in no world go on the same axis.

Weren't those originally "collectivism" vs "individualism" but they were changed because people got triggered because they didn't 100% correspond with their personal political views?
 
So after taking the characterization from CK2 and the focus tree from HOI4, we are getting the governments from Stellaris?
Love it, but especially excited about getting the pops from V2 into EU4 for 1.27.
Soon™
 
I can't believe this. How can you guys treat Spain so badly? Spain was the world power for most of the EU4 frame time. Currently Spain is so underpowered.

Spain should be in EU4 what the UK is in Victoria II: a very powerful enemy that makes the player to have a real opponent.

What?

For the majority of the EU4 timeframe; Spain was a secondary power. Hell; for a large section of the EU4 timeframe [The first 1/4]; Spain dosen't even exist. The only time that Spain could be even said to be 'the world power' in the EU4 timeframe was ~1521 - 1588 [The sinking of the Armada; which eventually was a large contributor to bankruptcy in 1596. And then 1607.]. Which HAPPENS to be where Spain gets it's unique Age Bonus.

And even in that tmeframe; The Ottomans and England/GB were still as powerful; if not moreso. Same with the Ming. The Spanish Empire was he 3rd~4th most powerful nation; even at it's height.

For most of the 1600's Spain was a declining power; and by the 1700's it was hardly even a major power at all. There's a reason why Spain is only just a Great Power at the start of Vicky 2; and almost immediately loses it beyond the starting bookmark.

From the late 1500's onwards the Spanish Empire was in decline; between bankruptcies; the Dutch revolts; losing wars and their colonies becoming Independent.

And let's not even get into the Napoleonic Wars... Spain did so well during those.
 
Considering many governments outside of Europe operated very differently from the more Western-style ones we see in the teasers, would it be in any way feasible to include things like the Iqta or (fingers crossed) even the Mandala monarchies of Indochina for specific cultures?
that is a fair point.

Weren't those originally "collectivism" vs "individualism" but they were changed because people got triggered because they didn't 100% correspond with their personal political views?
No because fanatic individualism wasn't really fanatic individualism it was parliamentarian, which is in itself a pretty collectivist system. Under the old system you couldn't have capitalist slavers, a staple of sci-fi.
Also the kind of individualism they had overlapped with the authorities so it seemed kind of pointless. I seriously don't see why they feel the need to double down on authorities at all, they could use those ethics for something instresting instead.
 
Hey, if you're reworking governments and ranks and what not, could I suggest, nations that become Empire rank could get their own special HRE type mapmode or colour to differentiate themselves from the rest of the world, and other empires? Perhaps something including their subjects, like the HRE has different colours for electors/free cities/emperor? Would be cool and flavourful to feel as if you've built a different type of state.