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EU4 - Development Diary - 8th of October 2019

Good morning, and welcome to today’s dev diary! As Jake foretold last week, today I’ll be talking about some of the Imperial Incidents coming in next year’s big expansion.

For those of you who have forgotten or for some reason do not read our dev diaries with fervent religiosity, this is what an Imperial Incident is:

“The other thing for us to look into today are Imperial Incidents. One thing we wanted to do was to make the Empire feel alive and rife with bickering princes. To that end, we have rolled some existing occurrences throughout EU4 and History, as well as many others, into a system that has the HRE both create and react to issues in Central Europe and the immediate vicinity.

When the conditions are ripe, an Imperial Incident can trigger for the Empire. All member states will be informed of the incident, and it will prominently be displayed in the HRE interface. The Emperor will then have 6 months to make a decision on the incident, with wide-ranging knock-on effects.”

These Incidents give us the opportunity to both revisit old content and to design something new. Last week Jake gave a description of the reworked Burgundian Inheritance (which we might revisit in more detail in the future). Today I’ll show off two new event chains and their associated Incidents: The King in Prussia, and The Great Peasants’ War.

dd_prussia.png


Prussia is no longer awarded a shiny Kingdom-rank crown simply for existing. An independent Prussia must establish itself as a relevant power before it has the opportunity to claim its crown. After this event fires, the Imperial Incident begins and the Emperor must decide on how to proceed.

  • If the Emperor decides to elevate Prussia to an Imperial Kingdom in the fashion of Bohemia, they will lose 10 Imperial Authority but greatly improve their relations with Prussia. This will also anger any electors that have rivalled Prussia.

  • If the Emperor decides to accept the historical compromise - that the monarch may call himself “King in Prussia” but not “King of Prussia” - the effect is similar but reduced. The Electors will not be angered but Prussia will be only mildly grateful to the Emperor.

  • If the Emperor refuses to acknowledge any Prussian monarch bearing the title of “King”, Prussia must make a decision between their Kingly crown or their status as an Imperial Prince, potentially being ejected from the Empire. This will greatly anger both Prussia and its Elector allies.
dd_peasants.png


The Great Peasants’ War was a time of great upheaval in the Holy Roman Empire. Driven by religious, economic, and social woes the oppressed masses rose up across Germany against their feudal masters. This event can happen prior to the League War, which is delayed until this conflict is resolved. National unrest is increased throughout the Empire, peasant rebels are more likely to spawn, and countries that break to peasant rebels may become a Peasant Republic. While the Great Peasants’ War rages on, the game will track the success of the rebels throughout the Empire. After several years have passed and the dust has settled, the Emperor must make a resolution:

  • [Available only if the rebels are not highly successful] If the Emperor chooses to crush the rights of peasants, the Noble estates across the Empire will become more loyal and more powerful. This effect is reduced if the rebels are moderately successful.

  • If the Emperor chooses to grant concessions to the peasantry and enforce their rights, the Noble estates across the Empire will not only lose Influence but also some of their Land Share. The strength of this effect depends on the success of the rebels. This will mean that Princes of the Empire have more Crown Land, but they will also collect less taxes due to their concessions to the peasantry. If the rebels are highly successful, nations in the Empire will continue to become Peasant Republics when breaking to peasant rebels even after the Great Peasants’ War ends.

We have a lot more Incidents left to talk about: in the unspecified future I’ll talk about such Incidents as the Dutch Revolt and the Shadow Kingdom. For now though that’s all I have to say, I hope you all have a great day and that you return for next week’s dev diary!
 
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With the possible exception of the empire of China, I’m not sure where else Incidents would be appropriate, as opposed to just using normal events.
Western Europe after XVIth century was very very sensible on what was happening in other country composing it. And HRE minors were very close to non HRE member that could help them counter balance the emperor influence (hence the Reunion wars)
 
Prussia is no longer awarded a shiny Kingdom-rank crown simply for existing. An independent Prussia must establish itself as a relevant power before it has the opportunity to claim its crown. After this event fires, the Imperial Incident begins and the Emperor must decide on how to proceed.

What if Prussia is the emperor?
 
I like that were spicing up the HRE, the most fun area of the game, but the Prussia event seems very stale, From what i can tell there is no benefit or penalty to the Emperor from not granting Prussia the 1st or 2nd option, and the 3th one doesnt sound like it matters much to both nations, so if i might ask what exactly are the penalties?
 
These are all very exciting news.

If I may add, can you please make the event window a bit more 'imperial' in regard to Imperial Incidents? I would really appreciate it. It would give more flavour to this pop-up, and not just be another event you dismiss as soon as you get it.

Just something like an imperial eagle in the background of the text would do. I'm really hoping for a more ornamented event appearance to make it stand out from the others, though
 
We still have 18 or maybe even less dev diarys left and the devs seem to try to make it look like they ran out of content to show as hard as they can. I could also be pessimistc and say that they try to hide the new mechanics and how they work for as long as they can so they can ignore feedback for it cause it´s too close to the release date.
 
We still have 18 or maybe even less dev diarys left and the devs seem to try to make it look like they ran out of content to show as hard as they can. I could also be pessimistc and say that they try to hide the new mechanics and how they work for as long as they can so they can ignore feedback for it cause it´s too close to the release date.
Isn't the release date "Q1 2020"? That would mean up to nearly 30 DDs, surely.
 
How about changing Prussia's map color to Prussian blue?

a72ct8k18gt01.png


This way, we could save its current gray color for Germany. I think these make more thematic sense than the current colors.
 
Isn't the release date "Q1 2020"? That would mean up to nearly 30 DDs, surely.
Well, it's probably going to be 10 more in this year (I don't expect any dev to write one on the 24th or 31st of December ;) ). 2020 has thirteen tuesdays in Jan-Mar, so it's going to be somewhere between 11 and 23 dev diaries before release. To be honest, I would've liked some thoughts about the much discussed (among the players, that is) balance issues that were introduced or increased in 1.26 and 1.28, but it doesn't look like the devs are interested in giving insight in that regard.

I do like the majority of the announced changes (still sceptical about the merc changes, otherwise they look quite interesting), but most of the issues that keep me on 1.25 for most of my campaigns don't seem to be going away, which keeps me rather apathetic towards the new patch despite the good parts.
 
@neondt Are there any chances to include Polish-Teutonic "Peace of Thorn" kind of event as an Imperial Incident? It begs for some imperial involvement and would permit some soft pushing towards the historical outcome, where Poland does leave the Order in its rump form in the East, but takes the Royal Prussia from it.
Definetely some rework should be done about Peace of Thorn.

There's no reason for the game to be reliably producing such an ahistorical outcome so early after the start of the game as a nation of Danzig becoming a Polish vassal, and owning most of the Teutonic Order's lands (after winning the Prussian confederation war) in the mid XV century.
 
Definetely some rework should be done about Peace of Thorn.

There's no reason for the game to be reliably producing such an ahistorical outcome so early after the start of the game as a nation of Danzig becoming a Polish vassal, and owning most of the Teutonic Order's lands (after winning the Prussian confederation war) in the mid XV century.
The event already makes danzig a vassal of Poland and cede some land, might be able to make it cede/release Teutonics.
 
Will we see Burgundy's mission tree with the incident?
Also hoping Bohemia and the Pope have some missions coming as well.
Imperial incidents looks good, maybe something about the expansion of the ottomans (if they own Croatia/Slovenia/Hungary)
 
Definetely some rework should be done about Peace of Thorn.

There's no reason for the game to be reliably producing such an ahistorical outcome so early after the start of the game as a nation of Danzig becoming a Polish vassal, and owning most of the Teutonic Order's lands (after winning the Prussian confederation war) in the mid XV century.
Danzig being a Polish vassal would actually make some sense when it comes to late 15th century, early 16th century situation. Royal Prussia had its own General Estates, coin etc. though was under PU with Poland. What does not make sense though is that Danzig, Poland and Lithuania have no incentive not to annex all of the TO straight away. In reality there was some considerable pressure from both the emperor and the pope not to do so, but rather just to take back the lands previously being part of the Kingdom of Poland i.e. Royal Prussia with the bishopric of Warmia/Ermland thrown in as Polish vassal.
 
They must have some amazing content in the pipeline considering how long it's taking to finish this DLC. Nothing they've announced so far would suggest such a long lead in.