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Welcome to the third development diary for Europa Universalis 4: El Dorado. Today, we’ll be talking about America and Liberty… and no, it’s not about the USA. Specifically, we’ll be talking about the Mesoamerican and South American Inti and Maya religions added in the expansion, and the new Liberty Desire system included in the free patch.


Maya
The Maya were divided into a large number of city-states vying for supremacy. In the past, these states were united in a large confederation called the League of Mayapan until infighting shattered the league. In El Dorado, we’ve attempted to simulate this expansion and contraction through Religious Reforms similar to the ones available to the Nahuatl (for details, see El Dorado Dev Diary 1). For a Mayan nation to pass a reform, they will need to own at least 20 provinces, have positive stability, no revolts, and no overextension. This is a little daunting.

Upon passing a reform, a Maya state will lose about half its territory, shrinking to a size of 10 core provinces determined by culture, religion and distance to capital. Other provinces will break away, joining existing nations or forming new nations and requiring you to reconquer them again. For each reform you have passed, you will be able to keep hold of more territory, retaining an extra province in addition to the original 10. As with the Nahuatl, when the last reform is passed and you border a Western nation, you will be able to reform your religion, getting a tech boost and gaining the permanent benefit of the religious reforms.

The Maya religion starts with +1 Tolerance of the True Faith and +1 Possible Advisors and their reforms give -10% Land Maintenance, -2 Global Unrest, +10% Infantry Power, +1 Colonist and -20% Core-Creation cost.


Inti
Where the Maya and Nahuatl religions are about expansion and contraction, the Inti faith is about maintaining the authority of the Sapa Inca by having the people worship him as a God. Inti nations have an Authority value that goes up from owning vast stretches of territory, and goes down when the ruler grants autonomy to a province (either from granting autonomy via by the grant autonomy action, being forced to by rebels, or choosing to do so in an event). Authority is also affected by a number of unique events added for the Inti religion. Authority reduces unrest and makes it cheaper to increase stability.

An Inti state that has 100 Authority and owns at least 10 provinces can pass a Religious Reform, but doing so will remove all their Authority and spark a civil war as a pretender exploits the loss of authority to attempt to seize the throne for themselves. After all, every reformer is challenged if they go too far.

If you lose this civil war, two Religious Reforms are lost, greatly setting back your progress towards reforming your religion.

As with the Nahuatl and Maya, when the last reform is passed and you border a Western nation, you will be able to reform your religion, getting a tech boost and gaining the permanent benefit of the religious reforms. Because the Inti religion does not have the same cycle of expansion and contraction as other two, Inti religious reforms are generally weaker than those of the Maya and the Nahuatl, but easier to accomplish.

The Inti religion starts with +1 Tolerance of the True Faith and -0.05 Monthly Autonomy in all provinces and their reforms give +10% Manpower Recovery Speed, +1 Colonist, +0.5 Yearly Legitimacy, +0.05 Land Morale and -10% Core-Creation Cost.

As the Nahuatl reforms were not finalized in DD1, I will also take the time to share them: -0.05 War Exhaustion, +1 Diplomatic Relations, +5% Discipline, +1 Colonist and -20% Stability Cost Modifier.


Liberty Desire
In Conquest of Paradise, we introduced the concept of Liberty Desire for Colonial Nations, measuring their desire to break away from their parent country, but the system has always been a bit too simplified revolving almost entirely around tariffs and very rarely resulting in said Colonial Nations winning their independence.

In the 1.10 patch, we will be introducing a major rework of Liberty Desire that turns it into a much deeper and more interesting system, but also expands it to all other subjects such as Vassals and Personal Union juniors. In 1.10, each subject has a Liberty Desire towards their Overlord, calculated based on a large number of factors such as opinion, diplomatic reputation, relative power, and relative diplomatic technology levels. Certain subject types like Marches and Client States are more loyal and thus have inherently lower Liberty Desire, while the Daimyos of Japan are an unruly bunch and have a large bonus to their LD. Vassals will also be aware of the power of all vassals relative to their liege, and their Liberty Desire will go up if they think that they could, together, bring you down. (This might even tame early game France - a little.)

While Liberty Desire is lower than 50, the subject will be considered ‘Loyal’ (as seen in their attitude). They will dutifully pay taxes, send their armies to help you in war, and refuse any offers of Support for Independence.

If Liberty Desire is above 50, but below 100, the Vassal is considered ‘Disloyal’. They will refuse to pay taxes and tariffs, won’t send their armies to help you in war (only defending their own territory) and will both look for foreign powers to support their independence and seek to ally with other rebellious subjects of their liege. If they find allies and supporters, their Liberty Desire goes up by an amount depending on the power of said supporters and allies.

At 100, the subject will be ‘Rebellious’. They will not only refuse to pay taxes and send help, but will declare war for independence the moment they think they have a shot at winning. When a subject declares war for independence, they will automatically call in all other subjects of their liege that they are allied to, and all independence supporters of both themselves AND their allies, meaning that their liege can be faced with quite the independence war indeed.

All in all, this system is meant to make vassals feel more lifelike - they are no longer mere slaves to their liege’s whims, but independent entities with their own goals who may turn on their ‘overlord’ if he does not take care to maintain their loyalty.


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Check out all the videos for #EuropaUniversalis IV: El Dorado expansion here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqRhPbyFDQWjGgEWYgQwby-H4Lm7xrNGD
 

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Suggestion: merge "vassal income" and "tariff income" to the saem thing with same modifiers. This will make it much more profitable to have ideas connected to it.
 
Actually that sounds like a pretty significant potential issue in the design. If you count all subjects, but not all go over 50%, you're going to wind up with a lot of junk wars. If you don't, then you can get chains of "this doesn't count" making the modifier trivial to manage.

If your vassals = your power and half of them go over 50% to ally each other, why would they DoW (without foreign support) into 3x their forces?
 
just one suggestion to increase realism of the new LD mechanic: let PU and vassal subjects keep their enemies and rivals. If you attack them and feed them their land, their LD lowers...
 
Will you be able to demand from your subject to play you taxes again should he get over 50 LD? That would decrease other vassals opinion of you and put you in a war with the disobedient vassal and his allies and supporters if he refuses.

Will LD reduce the speed at which you can integrate vassals?

Will LD decrease vassals opinion of you? For example you'd get -0.5 opinion for each point of LD above 50.

Overall I'm really happy with the changes you're making with LD. In my opinion the game was way too easy and needed more challenge, which you delivered.
 
Because it likely doesn't take into account the armies of the vassals who didn't join. I don't know what answer you honestly expected.

"Likely"? AI currently does compare its alliance to the enemy's, and includes subjects, so I don't think its at all likely.

(Or at least no more likely than anything else the AI might do wrong.)
 
The Mayan religion seems a bit more gamey compared to Inti and Nahuatl, but I guess its as close as we can get to City state leagues with the reform mechanic.

Question: Still any chance we may get Nahuatl changed to Teotl? Nahuatl really doesnt make sense as a name for the religion.

Also the new Liberty desire sounds really cool, perhaps now we can force domino effect rebellions on large colonial players by taking out the overlord on the continent. As in taking down Spain and watch as all his American colonies rebel at the same time.
 
"Likely"? AI currently does compare its alliance to the enemy's, and includes subjects, so I don't think its at all likely.

(Or at least no more likely than anything else the AI might do wrong.)

Well, the other concern is that it'll declare wars at questionable times as well. See: France getting dogpiled so OPM Baden declares on France; everyone peaces out and now it's just France vs Baden. France can stomp that even in its ruined state.
 
As for the incas (read cuzco), which I have a habbit to play with since EUIII, their ideas coupled with religious reforms make them absolute masters in colonisation if you take exploration (4 colonists ftw!), unless PDOX decides to rework cuzco/inca ideas because of this offcource.

Yeah six colonists will be insane. Frankly, you could change Cuzco's +1 colonist to an Authority boosting idea, seeing as how the central temple to Inti was in Cuzco.

That all depends on whether or not Authority sticks around after reformation, which we don't know yet.
 
If my vassal is disloyay and doesn't pay taxes/tarrifs and doesn't send any troops to help me, may I dow him and "restore order"? It'd be pretty strange for any liege to let his vassal grow completely independent.
 
Why would it? Authority is used for passing reforms. If you've already passed all reforms and reformed your religion....

But it also lowers global unrest and stab cost, so it could go either way.
 
I think liberty desire should account for more factors.

Some or all that can be considered:

Prestige
Legitimacy (for monarch-vassals)
Republican Dictatorship (for republic vassals)
government type (republic get bonus with republics, monarchy gets bonus with monarchy etc)
Different religion (heretical and heathen; affected by tolerance)
Culture (affected by acceptance)
AI personality (perhaps based on leadership, high military+dip leaders more likely to aspire for independence)
Power projection
Distance (barring colonial nations/protectorates etc, vassals from too far away should get a penalty, e.g., naxos under Byzantine should get a minor bonus while Naxos under Teutonic order should get a penalty)
Stability (unstable liege = more desire for independence and same in reverse)
Failed/Successful independence war (raises/lowers liberty desire of other vassals)
Voluntarily granting a subject independence (should raise liberty desire for other subjects)

Events (there will be some... right???)
 
Can you still convert to Christianity on Westernization? If so will it remove your religious reforms?

It is conceivable that the Europeans would still send missionaries into unconquered native states, but it might be more like the situation in Japan or China. It would be cool if there was mechanics for allowing the missionaries in or expelling them, with relation modifiers for doing either.

It would also be nice if the westernization conversion event would work for non Christian religions if kept in.
 
In this expansion, will there be events that let us effectively manage or missmanage our colonial nations? For example, events that let us clear depts by transferring them to our CN or refill our manpower pool from our CN both at the expense of LD? How about events where our CN might ask for financial aid in the wake of a disease outbreak or natural disaster for a reduction in LD? Another option could be having your king go and visit the CN at the cost of some legitimacy, or allowing them to send elected officials to a republican overlord at the cost of some administrative efficiency.
 
Do you have any plans to simplify tariffs? Currently, having to manage multiple colonial nation's tariffs and liberty desire is a pain. Also getting spammed with tariff and liberty desire related events from multiple nations is bothersome. Having a system for making all colonial nations pay the same tariffs and only giving one set of events would help.
Looking forward to spending hundreds of hours messing around in the nation designer and with the new american religions, looks amazing so far.
 
Do you have any plans to simplify tariffs? Currently, having to manage multiple colonial nation's tariffs and liberty desire is a pain. Also getting spammed with tariff and liberty desire related events from multiple nations is bothersome. Having a system for making all colonial nations pay the same tariffs and only giving one set of events would help.
Looking forward to spending hundreds of hours messing around in the nation designer and with the new american religions, looks amazing so far.

Tariffs will still be per CN, but we've significantly reduced the event spam (and made the individual events have larger effect).
 
Will you finally make the Subjects tab longer? and the name field wider, so I can tell between my different trade companies and the like without having to move the cursor over their names.