Tinto Flavour #30 - 4th of July 2025 - France

[Pavía]

Hello, and welcome one more Friday to Tinto Flavour, the happy days in which we take a look at the flavour content of Europa Universalis V!

Today, we will take a look at France! Let’s start without further ado:

The death of King Charles IV without a male heir in 1328 marked the end of Capet rule over the Kingdom of France, resulting in the coronation of King Philippe VI de Valois, a relative from a former cadet branch of the dynasty. However, it has been contested by King Edward III Plantagenet of England, on the pretext that while the Salic Law of France forbids the passing of the throne to a female successor, it does not forbid the inheritance through a female line. As the son of Dame Isabelle ‘the She-Wolf’ Capet, the last living sibling of King Charles IV, King Edward III might claim the throne of France as his birthright.

The tension over both countries has worsened over the past years, as our hospitality of the exiled young ruler of the Scots, King David II de Bruce, has enraged the English court, whose Balliol puppet seeks to seize that crown. As a response, King Edward III has also recently granted refuge to Sire Robert d’Artois, who escaped calls to face trial in Paris for his attempts to seize the County of Artois. There are rumors that Sire Robert is even encouraging the disgruntled King Edward III to press his claim to the throne of France militarily.

Should relations continue to deteriorate towards a boiling point, King Philippe VI may require the support of his subjects, although more than one ambitious Appanage hailing from the old royal line may seize on the opportunity to demand greater privileges, proving a greater threat to the stability of the crown than any invading claimant. The upcoming years will be consequential for the future of France, having to face the external English menace and the proud French lords at once. Will the country fall to the fake pretenders, or emerge as the main power in Europe?

A cool new feature of EU5: We have a ‘fixed DNA’ system, so certain important historical characters have their faces pre-scripted to look as close as possible to their historical portraits. We have already implemented this for important starting historical rulers, such as Philippe VI of France, and other important characters that can appear via event, e.g. Martin Luther.

As usual, please consider all UI, 2D and 3D Art as WIP.

France is already the biggest country in Europe in 1337, so I’ve opted to share with you 3 zoom levels today. In the second one, you can see how the forts look like at this moment.​

The diplomacy of France is quite interesting at start:

Some of the subjects are regular vassals, while others are a unique subject type, Appanages:

As its the starting situation of its government:

The French Nobility is a bit powerful, isn’t it?​

These are the starting unique reforms and privileges of France:

Its flavour-named Parliament, the États Généraux:

A bunch of unique advance, of which I’m going to show one per age, as usual:

As a Tier 1 country, France has a proper number of Dynamic Historical Events:

Here you have some of them:

This event will start an event chain about the fate of Étienne Marcel, Provost of Paris…

And this one another event chain about Bertrand du Guesclin.

France may also suffer a unique disaster in the Age of Reformation, the French Wars of Religion:

More actions and events will pop up after some time.​

It will also open this Reformation Edicts, a unique Law for France, as one of the means to resolve its disaster:

And here are some more events for the late game:

Another guy who will have his own event chain.

… And much more, but that’s all for today! Next week we’ll have a Tinto Maps Feedback on Monday, a Tinto Talks on Wednesday, and Tinto Flavour on Friday:

• Tinto Maps Feedback for South East Asia.
• Wednesday -> Tinto Talks about Tonalism, the new Mesoamerican religious group.
• Friday -> Tinto Flavour about the Aztecs.

And also remember, you can wishlist Europa Universalis V now! Cheers!

 

[Pavía]

Sorry for the delay, I was busy cooking some French-flavoured stuff.

 

[Pavía]

Probably it's more about the Wednesday's TT, but will there be present a very successful military leader from Brittany Bertrand du Guesclin as a character? Thanks.

Just read the TF.

 

[Pavía]

@Pavía can appanage subject types exist outside the French cultural space? As I wrote in my latest post, Alastani in Georgia definitely qualifies as an appanage.

Thank you.

It's a unique feature. Maybe in the future we can take a look at adding something similar for Georgia.

 

[Pavía]

The death of King Charles IV without issue

Shouldn't it be rather "without a male heir" ?

True, fixed, thanks!

 

[Pavía]

I am aware that this is WIP, 3D portraits are becoming better and better, but I hope they will not look so blurry compared to the background in final versions.
View attachment 1329642

They look better in-game, .png screenshots are not really good at showing characters in motion.

 

[SaintDaveUK]

View attachment 1329641

What are these ugly geometric patterns: placeholders for cities or something else?

Placeholders for cities and towns, they give the game a feel similar to the Imperator atlas mapmode imo. Silver stars are province capitals and gold stars are country capitals. As you notice they are WIP in terms of design and size

 

[Pavía]

Please give Richelieu his iconic outfit.

Also completely unrelated to France but Brabant keeps taunting me in the edge of every map

Eventually, we'd like to give all important characters a proper iconic look and outfit, but please consider that we have thousands of historical characters in the game, so we need to go by tiers of relevance, as this is way less important than making our 3D characters to look good in general terms.

 

[Pavía]

I seem to recall that there wasn't much information about the Cathars in the France map posts. Are there events around them, and what sort of populations have you settled on?

It's an interesting time for them seeing as the last real revival movement was about twenty years before the startdate if I recall, and the last known Perfect, the last follower of the brothers who launched that earlier revival movement, was killed about a decade before the start of the game. They're being hounded by inquisitors and slowly being repressed into nonexistence.

There are a few remaining, less than 5% of the population, in some areas of Southern France. But Cardinal Jacques Fournier made sure to make it unlikely a revival, yes (poor Pierre Clergue...).

 

[Pavía]

Ancient french taxation doesn't sound good, isn't there any more immersive name?

We're open to suggestions.

 

[Pavía]

Is Napoleon one of the historical characters that can appear, or is that too far into the timeline? If so, is he destined to be French, or will he appear in whichever country happens to occupy Corsica around that time?

Yes, but we will talk about him when the time for the Revolution comes.

 

[Pavía]

If it could be of any help : René Descartes.
The cardinal de Richelieu.

Fixed the first; we're keeping the second, as being most widely known in English as such.

 

[Pavía]

Why does Bourgeoisie privilege increase Noblesse satisfaction only, and does not impact Bourgeoisie satisfaction?

View attachment 1329645

Bug, fixed.

 

[Pavía]

Is the TM feedback on monday about mainland or maritime SEA?

Mainland.

 

[Pavía]

I know Revolutions are going to be the content of a future TT, but is there any France-specific Revolution flavour or disaster/situation?

There's even more French-specific flavour tied to the Revolution.

 

[Pavía]

If France has not retaken its lands by a certain date, will there be an event for a schizophrenic divinely-inspired peasant girl to show up? And will it be possible to avert her historical fate?

Check this Wednesday's Tinto Talks.

 

[Pavía]

But please nerf her admin skill, thats just unrealistic for a peasant with no formal education on statehood

Yeah, already done.

 

[Pavía]

Thank for this TF !

No mention of Vauban and his fortifications? Unique fort maybe ?

And Versailles with a default construction time of just 365 days? The main construction of the palace actually took nearly 50 years, mainly during the reign of Louis XIV, from 1661 to 1710. Compressing that monumental royal project into a single year really downplays the scale and ambition of what was one of the most massive undertakings of the early modern period.

 

[Pavía]

Will there be anything for the Fronde and various outcomes for it

 

[Pavía]

I still think you should rename Parlament to Diet or Council

Parlament can be a flavour name for England

Parliament is a clear enough, general name for the feature, Diet is quite specific for some cultures, and we also have to be consitent with the different types: