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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:
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Change after change, patch after patch all aimed at limiting expansion. You really don't like those of us who want to see how big we can get. The focus of this game just more and more becomes maintanence of what you have instead of expansion.
 
Change after change, patch after patch all aimed at limiting expansion. You really don't like those of us who want to see how big we can get. The focus of this game just more and more becomes maintanence of what you have instead of expansion.
That's part of the fun.

Luckily, this is one of the few games where players can have a deeper understanding of game mechanics than the devs. So there is always opportunity for creative workarounds to limits.
 
Change after change, patch after patch all aimed at limiting expansion. You really don't like those of us who want to see how big we can get. The focus of this game just more and more becomes maintanence of what you have instead of expansion.

I would love it to bits - if they actually added anything else to do. It's a...somewhat dysfunctional design process.
 
Change after change, patch after patch all aimed at limiting expansion. You really don't like those of us who want to see how big we can get. The focus of this game just more and more becomes maintanence of what you have instead of expansion.

Disloyal vassals won't stop you conquering the world, they'll just make the process that much more violent.

Honestly though I think 'maintenance of what you have' should be a bigger part of the game. Not in the form of hard penalties to monarch power, but in the form of internal issues you have to manage over the long term, rather than everyone sitting on zero LA and unrest forever more after the initial pacification.
 
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.

In a very abstract sort of way I can see it: The "Primitive" north americans resisted for far longer than the territorial states after all.
 
Changes regarding Mesoamerica are very interesting, but changes regarding vassal system are good but in the same time somewhat disturbing.

Why disturbing? Because they are indication where this game is heading to? And that is limiting expansion. Yes vassal feeding system was OP in some way, and it needed overhaul.

I just hope that in the near future there will be no truce timers of 50 or 100 years. But who knows.
 
Will dependancies learn to try to declare independance while the overlord is at war? The fact that it doesn't by now, even if the overlord is just folly occupied, while someone support a vassal/minor PU independance is the main factor for vassals/PU stability. See, as Norway, it's a nightmare to try to break free before Sweden as they will loyaly fight while they are hostile towards Denmark; now however, it's just a cakewalk to wait for Sweden to declare first and immediately declare my own war on the spot (or ally them in the first hand, though AI Norway is vassal attittude at start, so it won't consider it).
 
I like the new LD, apart from when i inherited burgundy with castille after the PU with aragorn and when i got france to release toulouse which i than annexed, which let them turning on me all at once I haven't had a single vassal declare on me since my noob days lowl. Lost some in big wars sure, but these days when i see i'm losing i just give em peanuts before the WS gets too high :D
 
Are religion reform bonuses in addition to national ideas?
 
It does feel like a strange design process. When the game was new, super coalitions rarely, rarely formed. Truces lasted five years, not fifteen. Vassals would not rebel.

If I was going to start playing EU4 today instead of when it was first released, I'd probably get into my first war, get warscore all the way up to 100 percent and be like 'I want that territory to expand', and then quit when three major powers declared coalition war on me. Any other strategy game out there encourages the player to expand their empire. Some games make it harder, some make it easier. I just feel like they're putting up additional hurdles for the players to deal with rather than adding interesting mechanics that keep me immersed and engaged in the game.

O well.
 
It does feel like a strange design process. When the game was new, super coalitions rarely, rarely formed. Truces lasted five years, not fifteen. Vassals would not rebel.

If I was going to start playing EU4 today instead of when it was first released, I'd probably get into my first war, get warscore all the way up to 100 percent and be like 'I want that territory to expand', and then quit when three major powers declared coalition war on me. Any other strategy game out there encourages the player to expand their empire. Some games make it harder, some make it easier. I just feel like they're putting up additional hurdles for the players to deal with rather than adding interesting mechanics that keep me immersed and engaged in the game.

O well.

I'm not entirely against what you are saying. Super truces are annoying. I would like to be able to propose a longer or shorter truce to my foes myself. However, revolting vassals is kind of an internal mechanic and super coalitions make the game more realistic in that a middle power shouldn't be able to paint the map in its color in a few years. Now, I understand a new player wanting to play to Risk could be frustrated, but IMHO, if diplomacy is not to be an empty shell, there must be some mechanics to check an agressive player.

Now, they seem to have understand that not all players want to "mod out" something which doesn't suit them, so they added options. It would be great if they could make options to make coalitions more or less reactive and maximum truce time. Maybe they could even make rebellous vassals an option, but I love this idea for my part.
 
Eh. There's been instances in HRE when I got a coalition started against me for getting caught fabricating a claim. The game just feels a lot more restrictive than it did two or three years ago.
 
It does feel like a strange design process. When the game was new, super coalitions rarely, rarely formed. Truces lasted five years, not fifteen. Vassals would not rebel.

If I was going to start playing EU4 today instead of when it was first released, I'd probably get into my first war, get warscore all the way up to 100 percent and be like 'I want that territory to expand', and then quit when three major powers declared coalition war on me. Any other strategy game out there encourages the player to expand their empire. Some games make it harder, some make it easier. I just feel like they're putting up additional hurdles for the players to deal with rather than adding interesting mechanics that keep me immersed and engaged in the game.

O well.

The new changes look good to me. That's a bit dumb to work your way through vassalizing someone way stronger than you and keep him as a vassal for decades without a single revolt, even if you annex other vassals one after the other, that big vassal being well aware he's the next one on the list. Or how you can vassalize OPM Byzantium, return and feet it most of the Ottomans, and keep him on check just with your diplomat, even if it's now one of the strongest nation in the world. But, eh, why should it want freedom, it has your diplomat in its capital!!

I'm a bit wondering about the march system though. I regularly turn nations into marches, though it mostly seems a tool to keep big vassals happy in that DD; however, if they have more than 40 BT, they loose the bonuses from being a march, so I'm encouraged to turn big vassals into marches, but those big marches just work as the usual vassal...!!