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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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Will there be any options to further integrate colonial nations into your nation? Something along the lines of the Whig proposal to give the 13 colonies representation in the British parliament?
 
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.

When you are in the HRE, it is a little as if you were already part of a country, a vassal of the emperor. Would you like it if your vassals made wars against each other? Surely you would act (if you could) to prevent one of them becoming as strong as yourself. It is what the HRE mechanism aims to do. It is not perfect, since it seems many times the HRE ends with a handful of big countries, but it's better than nothing.
 
This dev diary makes me glad I do my conquering the old fashioned way, by expending lots of admin points, and only take vassals if I can grab them as bonuses.
Also I wonder HOW powerful a nerf this is to France. Does anyone have the numbers of what the relative power of France proper vs. her vassals is at game start?
 
When you are in the HRE, it is a little as if you were already part of a country, a vassal of the emperor. Would you like it if your vassals made wars against each other?

Japan has no problem with it.

Also, in terms of raw game mechanics, if everyone is already vassals of the emperor, then everyone in the HRE should actually be considered vassal states to the emperor, with shifting ownership as the title changes.

Of course, this would have exceptional ramifications for the game, and I doubt they're good ramifications, so I can't suggest such a change in good faith. Anyways, HRE mechanics need some redoing, because they're there to punish you for playing the game (this is primarily a game about expansion) and are instead designed to force you to wait on timers (diplomat ticks), which is hardly anything engaging.

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.

I'm not outright opposed to the idea, but this can lead into a situation where you can never actually annex your vassals because they revolt as you try to annex them, which resets the annexation timer. I largely think what we have now is better than 'can't annex' spirals. You also create this odd scenario where you basically have to conquer land multiple times to add it to your realm, whereas with just coring, you only have to core it and then it's mostly done. Vassal annexation wasn't even strictly better than coring; 75% LA on annexation is pretty big.

If you could fabricate on your vassals and actually declare war on them without taking stability hits (I don't recall if you take stability hits normally for declaring on your vassals), then I'd not be that opposed to it. Being able to eat certain provinces off your vassals to make them less likely to rebel would be kinda okay.
 
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Alternatively, let overlords taking provinces from rebellious vassals be discounted heavily - something like ~25-50% AE. I think that is reasonable considering you likely already paid the aggressive expansion cost already to either force vassalize or feed them
 
I think having a special CB against your vassals(something like "Subdue" or "Pacify Rebellious Vassal") in case their Liberty Desire gets too high, without losing Stability from DoWing them.
Less AE is also a good idea for that CB.
 
I think having a special CB against your vassals(something like "Subdue" or "Pacify Rebellious Vassal") in case their Liberty Desire gets too high, without losing Stability from DoWing them.
Less AE is also a good idea for that CB.
It certainly makes a lot of sense if they're not paying their taxes or sending their troops to support your war efforts.
 
I think having a special CB against your vassals(something like "Subdue" or "Pacify Rebellious Vassal") in case their Liberty Desire gets too high, without losing Stability from DoWing them.
Less AE is also a good idea for that CB.

Perhaps Pacifying should drag other Disloyal vassals into the fight.
 
I agree there should definitely be some sort of CB or whatnot to force disloyal vassals into obeying (lowering their LD), but it should come with a host of penalties so that pacifying all your vassals isn't just something to do in your downtime (some sort of penalty with other vassals, large attrition bonuses to defenders, decrease in their force limits or economic power for a while after pacification, ect)
 
Does an Emperor that passed the reform to turn the HRE into vassals get something to hold back the Liberty Desire?

DOesn't matter if they have desire. It's illegal for them to declare war on an HRE state at that point
 
I wonder if Royal marriage and same dynasty have some direct effect on liberty desire. For some reason spreading dynasty (and inheriting dukes thrones, this is ?? dilpo-annexation in game terms) let French monarchy become great power after hundred years war.
Would be interesting if alliances of vassals have a chance to support special pretender (-x% income and force limits from vassals, +LA in wrong culture provinces). Even enforcing such modifier for temporal decrease in liberty desire would be good.
Will Ottoman sell subject's thrones to highest bider (Greek merchant etc. not king of France), if there is no adult heir? Better diplo/adm skills, adm/diplo personality, low legitimacy, low mil skill.
Can we get some kind of vassal or rather march (don't pay taxes to overlord, it's rather badly administrated, so -1 for base MP increase would be ok) for heirs in big eastern Sunni monarchies? They will start independence war in case of low legitimacy, stability, manpower or just bad luck on monarch death or they will just peacefully inherited (or given to new heirs if ascending monarch is old enough). Standard liberty desire mechanic should apply. Making them marches have positive side effect - military power of such entities was impressive given their wealth, mainly because most of them was preparing to succession war. As negative side effect would be them might be too loyal to overlord, even if ruler is old and his childes are already preparing to struggle. Like PU, but formed from your own or from just conquered provinces (if we fully annex our enemy) and rulers are heirs of your country. Yeah, i know this would be a lot of mess and would be difficult to implement ;).
 
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Huge thumbs up for the revamp of Liberty Desire, it was really way too easy to keep CN's in line before.
Also love the Inti religion mechanics, gotta play an Inca game as soon as I get a hold of this DLC. I'm not too thrilled abou the fact that Maya loses land when passing religious reforms, but I guess you guys know what you're doing and it's for ballance reasons to make reforming harder for them.
 
Looks like all the new religions are going to be badass once fully reformed, even Inti. After all that trouble, you'd be mad to convert to Christianity during Westernisation (especially Catholic, which is just terrible if you don't have any European territory for cardinals to spawn in).
 
As a relative newcomer to Paradox games (just started with EUIV about 6 months ago) I've been continually impressed with the steady stream of updates and expansions. This last developer diary, however, got me to sign up and post as I was just thinking to myself a few weeks ago that it would be nice if vassals had liberty desire like colonial nations did. It makes sense that a country you make your vassal diplomatically because they love you should be more well-disposed towards you than a country you beat in a war and forcefully vassalize. I'm really looking forward to this expansion (though not only for this feature)!