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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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The new Liberty system sounds great, but the Maya and Inca systems seem like an exercise is masochism with little features beyond said masochism.

Does this mean we might get some ability to influence Colonial Governments again? I was really disappointed that they were taken out, as they added much-needed challenge and were one of few ways to interact with my colonies on a diplomatic level.
 
The new Liberty system sounds great, but the Maya and Inca systems seem like an exercise is masochism with little features beyond said masochism.

Does this mean we might get some ability to influence Colonial Governments again? I was really disappointed that they were taken out, as they added much-needed challenge and were one of few ways to interact with my colonies on a diplomatic level.

They added challenge? I always just picked what the CNs wanted and never ran into any problems at all.
 
Any plan to better represent the Tarascans in this expansion? Not only were they archrivals of the Aztecs, the were one of the few centralized territorial states of the Americas, and, amazingly, were metalworkers, and even made weapons from metal.

This, along with many other flaws to the American situation, really does make the case of an overhaul to the technology system. Not only are the nomadic groups in North America technologically on par with the organised state of Tawantinsuyu, but these are both treated as merely two levels away from places such as China or Italy. It should probably also be mentioned here that the situation with Sub-Saharan Africa also suffers from this.

This chould also be represented with buildings, as well. It would be nice to have a Port as a contructable building, which exists as an additional barrier for constructing ships. This would be automatically constructed with colonies, of course, but would allow unlocking the ability to build large seagoing vessels to feel more like a real accomplishment rather than feeling like simply unlocking another unit type. More depth to buildings in general would be beneficial to the entire world, as well. Unlocking the ability to build temples, docks, and marketplaces at technology level 4 seems a bit too abstracted even for Sid Meier's Civilization.
 
Incan and liberty desire systems seem interesting. Not so sure about the Mayan system, though I suppose the religion itself didn't really have much to make a whole gameplay mechanic out of.
 
Really loving the new LD mechanics! One of my most wanted things...

While the religious reforms are somewhat unrealistic, I can see the reasoning behind them, since they set back the player and stop them from becoming megablobs without within the first century, so from a gameplay perspective I can certainly appreciate them. Mesoamerica should be a great place for a new game now!
 
They added challenge? I always just picked what the CNs wanted and never ran into any problems at all.

In the sense that it added another way to gain Liberty without taxing them heavily. I barely tax my colonies (in fact, I practice British-style salutary neglect, raising the taxes only when I'm in a spending crisis), so under the current system (where Liberty actually decays) I NEVER face diplomatic issues. It's like a major gameplay feature was ripped out.
 
Incan and liberty desire systems seem interesting. Not so sure about the Mayan system, though I suppose the religion itself didn't really have much to make a whole gameplay mechanic out of.

The problem comes from designing the mechanics around the religions themselves. Adding religious flavour is always good, but it's much more important to focus the actual mechanics on more pressing matters. The Americas play practically identically to Western Europe still, and as I've said above, the current technology system really doesn't work for the Americas, and is very clunky in the case of Africa. The decision to feature the early levels so close together may have been alright for the early iterations of Europa Universalis, but currently really show their flaws.
 
Influence does not increase your vassals' forcelimits, it increases how much forcelimit YOU get from your vassals.
So, does this mean that when your vassals suddenly break free and declare for independence, that you also get hit with a penalty to your force limit?

That is kind of a double wammy if so. Hey you not only have to fight all these former vassals, but now your armies are over force limit too (assuming you were already at your FL)!
 
So, does this mean that when your vassals suddenly break free and declare for independence, that you also get hit with a penalty to your force limit?

That is kind of a double wammy if so. Hey you not only have to fight all these former vassals, but now your armies are over force limit too (assuming you were already at your FL)!

Well yeah. If your vassal is disloyal, then you don't get any benefits from them. It's not really a 'penalty' (you still have your natural force limits), just you're losing the bonus. Don't rely on the loyalty of vassals.
 
What would happen if you reformed your religion and you are already western (i.e through the Nation Designer)? Would you merely keep the religious reform bonuses or would it break the game?
 
Has the vassal AI been fixed? I keep fighting wars with vassals set on "supportive" and 1 army with "attach" activated where they just sit there. Normal, vassal relation and no vassal cores involved in the war.

Or they're set to "aggressive" and they just sit in their capital. Even though I have assigned 1 target province.

Setting then to "default" makes them move, but they do their own, stupid stuff.

By the way, normal vassal, smaller than me, good relations (>100).


Especially the "support" bit where I have only 1 army with "attach" is silly. It should be obvious what I want...

I say this because adding liberty desire kind of requires a fix for these issues.

I'm not complaining about the new features presented here, I like them, I was asking about something similar 6+ months ago. So, cool!
 
Will there be any ideas/policies/government types that affect liberty desire? (e.g., I'd expect Feudal Monarchy to lower it, and it'd probably fit Influence as well.)
 
Any chance the calendar will display in the Mayan Long Count calendar for countries with the Mayan religion? (For the record, 11.11.3.11.1 is the game's starting date.) ;)
 
What would happen if you reformed your religion and you are already western (i.e through the Nation Designer)? Would you merely keep the religious reform bonuses or would it break the game?

It should be fine. Reforming your religion or government doesn't have any direct interaction with your tech group, it's just a prerequisite for Westernisation.
 
I just thought that overall the new liberty desire system look great.

I think there is a serious issue you guy may have to take into account or make changes or perhaps you guy already have done so. Either way I thought I should mention it.

I have notice some people mentioned France, Denmark (already slightly problematic in 1.9.2 with Sweden), and Poland-Lithuania. That is all good and cover most extreme cases of typical vassal/PU except for ONE. Muscovy has Pskov, Perm, and Yaroslavl (spelling?) vassals. While Muscovy on it's own is certainly stronger than most of those vassal.

I think this will just cause AI Muscovy to implode even more often if AI Muscovy get into 2-3 (Muscovy DoW Nov and at the same Golden Horde, Kazan Tribal Conquest DoW as an example unlikely to happen but have to consider it) way war and their vassals refuse/can't (Either liberty desire is high or all knocked out) to do anything about it or DoW AI Muscovy afterward.

While Pskov and Yaroslavl certainly share a similar culture and will likely remain closer to Muscovy (Dynasty and what not). Perm doesn't share the same culture and I think there should be some consideration take into account for how Muscovy grew historically (Siberia Colonization and Conquest). I am only mention this here because player and AI Muscovy are equally affected by this change. IE if balance between liege and vassal swing too much in either direction (easy to hold vs easy to break from liege) it will make some game more/less fun and/or predictable. PLC always forming in every game as an example of not fun and predictable.

In short, Please don't overlook Muscovy and make a mess of East Europe any worse. I am LOOKING at you PLC!

In my Ironman Romania run "Revenge of Darcula" fighting a strong PLC wasn't as fun as it sound. I had to pull in France and Russia BOTH to just hold them off. In that game I manage to completely annihilated Ottoman but couldn't touch PLC much although I did manage to cut their access to black sea which is not saying much. I think East Europe overall balance need a serious tweaking (Lithuania Humanist and accepted culture as a start points).
 
Great DD, and that new liberty desire system seems very tasty indeed, could really mix things up and also lay the foundation for a much more interesting vassal/PU/colony system :).
 
In short, Please don't overlook Muscovy and make a mess of East Europe any worse. I am LOOKING at you PLC!
PLC stronk aliv in 1821