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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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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?

That's my understanding. Well, the official reason was because "they didn't work"?

Egalitarianism can and does refer to things like equality of political enfranchisement. It doesn't have to refer to equality of outcomes or equality of income. That the egalitarianism in Stellaris is opposed to authoritarianism should make it pretty clear what it represents.

But none of this is very relevant to EU4. There's actually a thread about this on the first page of the Stellaris forum right now.

Even as you explain it, it doesn't make any sense. You can have an authoritarian democracy: it is a system that the majority rules and there are few protections for the citizens against said rule. It took me less than a minute to debunk those concepts as mutually exclusive. And it just illustrates the point: Paradox is a company based in history, not political theory. When it comes to politics, their games show a distinct lack of creativity and imagination. Stellaris' civic system can't describe every country that exists at present, let alone throughout human history, let alone ALIEN ideology. This political system for EU4... someone can complain about it being unrealistic, but that was never Paradox's aim. Their aim was to balance bonuses against each other, not political ideas. Does constitutionalism = federalism? Nope. Does that (likely) matter to Paradox? Nope. Should someone get worked up about something they can't change? Nope.

To expect a rational political system coming out of this company is having your hopes dashed by intent. Historically, they have had little interest in accurate representation of political ideas.
 
@ the developers (@DDRJake @Trin Tragula ); will we get new some new provinces, though? As not all expacks have featured them. Just curious, it's always a thing that gets me excited and all nerdy.

Just curious.
 
Hmm WIKI is pretty outdate on this then! It is still listed as "constitution republic" instead of "federal republic" or "american republic".

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/United_States

While Govt wiki has it listed. I am not sure if in-game or not. Given Persia patch note safe to say yes.

https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Government#American_Republic
The page is listed as 1.22 so I'd say so.

As much as I would have liked to have the wiki fully updated it is very much a work in progress.
 
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.
LOL

Spain was a great power from the 15th century to the 19th century. After the Congress of Vienna (1815) Spain became a secondary power: Vic2's timeframe.

Do you even know what the 'Spanish Golden Age' is? Why do you think Spanish is nowadays the 3rd most spoken language in the world behind English (1st) and Chinese (2nd)?

Spanish_Empire_Anachronous_en.svg
 
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You DO realize that your map is mainly blue, which would mean that we need a Portugal dlc, not a Spain one ?
You can prove Eastern Timor is the greatest nation on earth by getting a large enough font pointing at every village.

The main reason I'm not really interested in a Spain DLC, is that the amount of provinces in Spain is completely irrelevant to any gameplay : after the first decade the whole peninsula either gets diplomatically swamped down, or gets eaten by France. I prefer new content for interesting areas. Of which plenty are far worse off than Spain.
 
The main reason I'm not really interested in a Spain DLC, is that the amount of provinces in Spain is completely irrelevant to any gameplay : after the first decade the whole peninsula either gets diplomatically swamped down, or gets eaten by France.
This is why Spain needs a fix. Spain being "completely irrelevant" in EU4 is very ahistorical.

It's like if you play Vic2 and Great Britain becomes irrelevant and usually conquered by France and Norway AI.
 
Which interesting non-diplomatic fact happened on the Iberian peninsula between the Mormon conquests and Napoleon ?

EDIT: Please don't answer (here). As others have said, this topic is too much about Spain already. My comment was about your terrible picture, which you apparantly agree with (seeing the absence of a reply to that part of my post). I'll leave it at that.
 
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Which interesting non-diplomatic fact happened on the Iberian peninsula between 1444 and Napoleon ?
The Castilian civil war, the conquest of Granada, the conquest of Navarre, the Spanish invasion of Portugal, the Andalusian revolts, the Portuguese independence war, the continous fights in the French-Spanish border, the France annexation of Catalonia after it declared independence, the English multiple attempts to invade Spain, the War of the Spanish Succession (including a civil war between Castille and Aragon), the fights over the control of Gibraltar...

Which interesting non-diplomatic fact happened on the British Isles between 1836 and the 1st World War ?
 
Which interesting non-diplomatic fact happened on the Iberian peninsula between the Mormon conquests and Napoleon ?
Gotta watch out for that Joseph Smith guy. Utah was only the first to fall...
 
The Castilian civil war, the conquest of Granada, the conquest of Navarre, the Spanish invasion of Portugal, the Andalusian revolts, the Portuguese independence war, the continous fights in the French-Spanish border, the France annexation of Catalonia after it declared independence, the English multiple attempts to invade Spain, the War of the Spanish Succession (including a civil war between Castille and Aragon), the fights over the control of Gibraltar...
All in bold are a consequence of royal marriages 250 years after the start of this game. The Andalusian revolts lasted a few months at most according to google (less than most revolts in EU4), and the first three are already represented in-game.

Which interesting non-diplomatic fact happened on the British Isles between 1836 and the 1st World War ?
Why would that be relevant to EU4 ?
 
All in bold are a consequence of royal marriages 250 years after the start of this game. The Andalusian revolts lasted a few months at most according to google (less than most revolts in EU4), and the first three are already represented in-game.
This is ridiculous. You could just as easily dismiss nearly every single war in Europe or indeed the whole planet this way. You are arguing in bad faith.
 
Let's get the discussion back on topic, please.
 
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

Is it to understand that all unique and different governments already available in game will now be available (for switching) only with the expansion ?

For example, vanilla and existing DLCs offered the opportunity to switch between despotic and feudal monarchy, or to reform into a constitutional monarchy (or any revolutionary governments) etc...
Will all of these governments be available only if buying UNNAMED EXPANSION ?

If so, it seems really unfair
 
Iberia will get attention in due time, sheesh, it's not like EU4 is ending anytime soon.
 
Hmm, considering Iberia is not getting a map rework, I wonder where it will be... HRE seems like the more likely candidate now, as there aren't terribly many more map changes that an entire expansion could bring. The Balkans are too small and would most likely be part of a free patch or possibly an immersion pack, and Anywhere outside of Europe does not correlate to how the government is changing. It will honestly suck if there aren't any map changes, as that is what I personally look forward to the most out of any update. SO perhaps, HRE + Baltic + Poland?? Please have at least some kind of map update :(
 
Not sure if this has been answered yet, but is there a cap on how many reforms you can have? And if there is, is there a way to remove a reform in favour of another like with church power, if you've for instance picked +10% tax early game to fuel your expansion, but now your empire is so big you would rather have the -25% autonomy?
Your second question was answered in the dev diary.