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Hello, and welcome back to Europa Universalis IV. Last week we talked about features, where most of them will be in the free update, but todays feature will all be part of the next expansion.

First of all, I’d like to mention that we are adding a new government form called English Monarchy, which England will start with. It will give +0.5 Legitimacy, -1 Unrest, -0.1 Monthly Autonomy and give them access to a Parliament.

So what is a Parliament? It is a new mechanic that Constitutional Monarchies & Constitutional Republics has as well. A Parliament is a political body inside your country, which will have debates that if they pass will give you benefits for a decade.

There is quite a lot of different possible debates, and you are allowed to pick one of five random eligible ones.

To have a debate pass, you need to have a majority of the seats backing the issue. Of course, when an debate is started, all seats are against it, and you need to convince them to back it.

Every Seat of Parliament will have their own reasons you must fullfill to have them back an issue, and their reasons will be different for each issue. A coastal Seat of Parliament may want to be Granted Navy commissions, which reduces your naval tradition, while another Seat may want monetary compensation, while another want some military support, or a fourth want some more autonomy. Luckily, you only have to get half of them to support you to get the debate passed.

Any non-overseas province can be granted a Seat in Parliament and your capital will always have a Seat. There is no way to remove a seat in Parliament, unless the province is lost.

A Seat gets +10% to tax, production & manpower, while reducing autonomy by 0.01 per month. However each Seat increases stability & war-exhaustion costs by 2%.

You are also required to grant at least of 20% of your non-overseas cores a Seat in Parliament, and if you have less than that, one random will be picked for you. There is alert if less than a third of your non-overseas cores have a Seat.

If there is no current debate, nor any active benefits of an issue, you will slowly lose legitimacy & republican tradition. And if a debate fails, you will lose 20 prestige, so it is not the end of the world, but its not something you want to happen all the time.

Here are three examples of current issues that can be pushed through your parliament.

Backing the War Effort is available if you are at war, and will give you +1 stability when passed, and a 10 year benefit of -0.05 War Exhaustion, and +10% Manpower recovery

Charter Colonies
is available if you have either filled the Expansion or Exloration ideagroup, and gives a +10 year benefit of +1 colonist and +20 colonial growth.

Increase Taxes
will give you about 1/4th of a years income, and increase your tax-income by 10% for 10 years.

Of course, all of these values will change the more we playtest it.

Only countries with Parliaments will get a button, opening the Parliament View, near the Papacy & HRE buttons. And yes, the button you talked about last week, in the province interface, is the one indicating if its a seat of parliament or not.

U4wjCj1.jpg


Next week, we'll focus on why we build walls.
 
This is excellent addition... Can you also implement something similar (but obviously not exactly same) for Feudal Monarchy? This will simulate the struggle between Feudal Lords and the Monarchy, which existed before the Monarch was able to ram through absolute power for themselves (which is represented in game via the Absolute Monarchy Government). As far as I know, these countries had Estates which functioned somewhat similar to Parliaments.
 
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Next week, we'll focus on why we build walls.

Okay this for some reason sounds very exciting despite being incredibly vague. I am interested.

Also that's one damn ugly Parliament view, I hope that by the time its out it's made prettier like the HRE window is. :eek:
 
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To my critics - In a republic the base is "Assembly citizens", that holds authority. Eg. Roman Senate, Spartan Apella, Athenian Ecclesia, Polish Sejm, Novogorod Veche, Western/Modern Parliaments. Different political groups out there fighting for the introduction of good laws for them (often unkind to the state). Republic lacks "civil assembly" (with real power) is a principate, dictatorship, junta etc. So...

Liberals and conservatives were in late 18th century and mostly in 19th century. In the game's time frame there were MANY, MANY different factions: pro/anti religion, pro/anti country, pro/anti candidate to the throne but there was not ideological disputes, ideology was not a matter of policy.

And we must remember that this division outside of the "Western" is nonsense.
 
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What about the Swedish Ståndriksdag (The riksdag of the estates), will we see that? The riksdag had major political influence in sweden over the course of years, especially during the Frihetstiden, or Age of Liberty.

There's also the Spanish and French estate's general, the Imperial Diet, the Sjem, the Duma, the Senate/High Court in Venice and the Stadtholders just within Europe.

The system could be very versatile for mods if parliamentary debates possible could be limited based on nation tag and/or government type. So England and Russia would both have parliaments but the English parliament has a lot of power and can pass very useful laws while the Russia one is limited and can only give minor benefits.
 
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I've got a few ideas that might make it more interesting. First off, I think each province with a Parliament should have a loyalty score, which determines whether or not that province will support your actions. Periodically they gain demands and dislikes. Demands can be stuff like developments, a desire to be at peace, adopting certain ideas, taking special decisions, ect. Dislikes can be stuff like being at war, developing technology, converting religion or culture of provinces, ect. Alternatively, it could be a demeanor of the province which have fixed likes and dislikes. Doing what they like increases loyalty, doing what they dislike decreases loyalty. Overextention and unrest in a province decrease loyalty. You can also fulfill a request from a province every five years at a small penalty for a one time boost to loyalty. If you have the loyalty of at least half of your provinces, then you gain bonuses. Lose too much loyalty, or if the loyalty of a single province gets too low, then unrest starts to build up. Stability is lost. Eventually you'll end up in a disaster situation.

Do you see any reason why you couldn't just use Autonomy for that?


But yeah, it should play a role. Every seat that does not support a given policy, gets +5 autonomy in their province.
The higher a province's autonomy, the higher the cost to have their support. 100 autonomy = cost * 10
However, on each issue, one seat is proponent, other is opponent, and it's impossible to have them both on board.
 
This is a good addition to the game, although it does seem a bit static. It's definitely something you can use as a base to further develop the game.
 
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While this seems nice, I don't find the logic so good.

Why only English and Constitutionals have parliaments? Was Roman Senate considered just a poor tribal council then?

Secondly, those boosts are absurd. 10% to tax and everything else would make a nation seriously OP.
 
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Would you consider adding a similar mechanic for Elective Monarchies (removing ridiculous legitimacy sink for something far more interesting) and the Byzantines (to represent an Imperial Senate and/or court factions influencing the ruler more efficiently than the random +/- MP event.
 
Parliaments are a great addition and a great direction of the game! But, these concerns that some users addressed are valid in my opinion:
Hmmm. While this looks fantastic, I'm a bit less-than-sold on the whole 'giving support to make them agree in parliament' thing. Given that the only interactions in EUIV consist of either moving armies places or clicking buttons (click, stability raised, click autonomy increased...) I have a feeling that this is going to be a matter of 'choose debate', 'click the necessary four or five times', 'do nothing for ten years'.

So it is, admittedly, a step forward, but I don't think there are enough ways to interact with the game to make this a very meaningful mechanic. With the removal of sliders we can't even get a "Okay, I'll vote for you if you make us a little more narrow-minded..." or be forced to invest more in stability or whatever (over time) to get what we want. It's just a series of one-click actions, then boom you get your reward.

So I think the problem is twofold:
  • Too few ways to interact with the game: literally the only real interactions with the game world we have are moving armies, building buildings, and clicking in the country-control UI to immediately affect things, and;
  • Too little in the way of development, which follows on from the above point. I imagine that this parliament system will have various 'seats' demanding that the central government, say, become more tolerant (because that seat is in a Catholic province within a Protestant country, for example), but in current-game terms all this means is that they A) take the relevant decision/policy or B) take humanist ideas. I'd like to see these processes fleshed out more into at least a series of decisions with various requirements that give you actual objectives to fulfil in order to enact a policy. Or similar.
I also hope that this system is sufficiently built into the various other systems for it to feel like a cohesive part of the game (kind of like autonomy, the Holy Roman Empire and the Protestant Reformation do) rather than a tacked-on addition (which is sort of how Trade Companies feel, in my opinion). Off the top of my head, two vitally important mechanics I think need to be included to even approach the proper representation of parliaments are:
  • The parliament should be able to do stuff to affect the country other than just reduce prestige or give them a nasty tax income modifier. Parliament should be able to make demands, and if the king doesn't accede to them, I want to see civil wars breaking out, and;
  • The representation of colonial/non-majority culture/non-majority religion populations should definitely be an important factor in a parliament mechanic.
This is the very barest beginnings of what I mean by 'sufficiently built into the other systems' - parliaments should be inextricably linked to the autonomy and rebel systems, and they should also be linked to (at least) the colonial nations and liberty desire systems (do members of a personal union get representation? Vassals?)

I think Paradox is up to the challenge, if they put their minds to it... I just hope that they put in all the time and effort it deserves!

(And furthermore, this system, just like everything else you guys add, needs to be moddable. Please. Please!).
It definitely needs to be moddable yes, so we can add those kind of things later anyway! Your two important mechanics suggested are also good and viable for an expansion in the 15-20 range in terms of price. Your problem is valid too. I do not agree with clicking being a concern, as it is kind of how the games are designed. However, more clicking options and general interaction would be good, and that is the point with your post, in my opinion.

Adding new peacetime mechanics and depth is really, really great news, but this bit worries me slightly:

"If there is no current debate, nor any active benefits of an issue, you will slowly lose legitimacy & republican tradition."

Considering how the goal of the monarch should be to not have to rely on parliament for support and to rule of his own accord, it seems counter-intuitive to punish the player for being able to act in that way, at least with legitimacy which is something very valuable and hard to replace. Then again, if this is only something that comes up every ten years then that's a very reasonable timeframe in which to operate. But if this kind of system is ever to be extended to the rest of European monarchies, one should remember that Louis XIV didn't lose legitimacy for not calling upon the estates-general.

Basically, I think that instead of punishing the player for not using parliament with legitimacy decreases, it should just be harder to get support from them the longer it's been since the last time you asked. Use parliament often and accept their demands frequently and those demands will stay small, but go a long period without making any concessions or consulting them and when they finally get the chance they'll push you for every last concession they can get.

I say this because it seems like what this game mechanic is representing is extraordinary demands by the monarch from parliament, which was not something that parliamentarians wanted to deal with. The English ideal was always for the king to live off of his own incomes and not have to come to them asking for more. Not asking for extraordinary taxes (i.e. not using this mechanic) would increase legitimacy, if anything.

However it goes, I'm very happy to see Paradox focusing on depth, and I'll buy this expansion for sure, whatever it is.
Nice post.

I'd also like to see the possibility of a Parliamentary Monarchy drifting into an Absolute one should Parliament not be consulted regularly (or indeed, the wishes of parliament ignored). Obviously, Parliamentarian forces would object to such a transition - with the outcome depending on the strength of Parliament relative to the King. A strong king - especially a series of strong kings - should have a good chance of pushing through a transition to absolutism with only relatively minor opposition. A weak king trying to do so...well, looks like we've got us a civil war.

Conversely, it'd be interesting to see the reverse happening - nobles and other with power in an Absolute or Despotic Monacrhy forcing a weak king to establish a parliament.
This is valid, but the parliaments are designed for Constitutional monarchies anyway, so it would have to change and be adapted for more government types.

Hopefully you will be able to expand on this system in the future, looking at the potential of it. To me, this is taking one step towards making EU4 an even more historical, dynamic and balanced game!
 
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Would you consider adding a similar mechanic for Elective Monarchies (removing ridiculous legitimacy sink for something far more interesting) and the Byzantines (to represent an Imperial Senate and/or court factions influencing the ruler more efficiently than the random +/- MP event.

Shouldn't be too hard to mod something like that in. I for one am looking forward to tinkering with this.

Damn I'm getting hyped for this update. Sadly it also means I don't have much of a drive play EUIV before this comes out. Luckily Pillars of Eternity just came out so I should be set for a while.
 
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By the way, can we have a sticky with all of the dev diaries so they're easier to track?
 
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Please please consider this idea with the DLC

The game is lacking some peace time development and the recent dev diary is a step in the right direction. I believe there is more that can be done that may or may not be a little bit more simple though. Taking a page out of CK2 I've always loved the idea about how you could "go on hunts" or "organize a feast" for your vassals. Those for the most part kick started a dynamic event chain, sometimes going against your favor and other times going for your favor based on the choices you make. I think it would be very interesting to introduce events like this based on certain relationships. Ie. Royal Marriages, Alliances, Rivals, Vassals.

Simply by having some set to one of the former status, the likely hood of a dynamic event being fired off. For instance if you have a royal marriage with Austria, maybe a random event will come up. Maybe to help solve a dispute between whom you betrothed. You will get a nice little event chain and at the end of the day maybe it will lead to a prestige boost, legitimacy boost, maybe small coin or even a proper annul of the royal marriage. If you find that you have maxed out your relations and for some reason your ally continues to tank with maluses (bad religion, wants your provinces, ect) maybe once every 5 years you can invite the other king for a cup of tea and gain a relationship boost that way.

One of the most interesting things that has come for the game lately is being able to "teach" your heir with certain events. I've gotten a few that made my heir zealous giving him mil and I think some bonus with the papacy. More nice little dynamic events would be a nice touch. When people mention having more stuff to do at peace time... I don't think they just want to click a button (Factions) they want to...direct the flow of their nation a bit more. I feel like these events would be a little more exciting.

Too much click to improve isn't exactly the right direction imo
 
Will the demands of provinces scale with their "worth" i.e. their base tax, manpower, and production (development level)? Otherwise, I can see former Colonial Nations disincentivised to have Parliamentary government (as they have a high quantity of low-value provinces- they're wide rather than tall).
 
I welcome the addition of Parliaments, but the first impression is that it is too benefitting. Though it might be that it's difficult to run a big empire with a Parliament. Should be exciting to see the final result.
 
I welcome the addition of Parliaments, but the first impression is that it is too benefitting. Though it might be that it's difficult to run a big empire with a Parliament. Should be exciting to see the final result.
It seems odd that Representational government should make running a big empire more difficult. Maybe unaccepted culture seats in Parliament might give Nationalism or something like that, but why should a wide, same culture empire have problems because of it? Seems odd.
 
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Please please consider this idea with the DLC

The game is lacking some peace time development and the recent dev diary is a step in the right direction. I believe there is more that can be done that may or may not be a little bit more simple though. Taking a page out of CK2 I've always loved the idea about how you could "go on hunts" or "organize a feast" for your vassals. Those for the most part kick started a dynamic event chain, sometimes going against your favor and other times going for your favor based on the choices you make. I think it would be very interesting to introduce events like this based on certain relationships. Ie. Royal Marriages, Alliances, Rivals, Vassals.

Simply by having some set to one of the former status, the likely hood of a dynamic event being fired off. For instance if you have a royal marriage with Austria, maybe a random event will come up. Maybe to help solve a dispute between whom you betrothed. You will get a nice little event chain and at the end of the day maybe it will lead to a prestige boost, legitimacy boost, maybe small coin or even a proper annul of the royal marriage. If you find that you have maxed out your relations and for some reason your ally continues to tank with maluses (bad religion, wants your provinces, ect) maybe once every 5 years you can invite the other king for a cup of tea and gain a relationship boost that way.

One of the most interesting things that has come for the game lately is being able to "teach" your heir with certain events. I've gotten a few that made my heir zealous giving him mil and I think some bonus with the papacy. More nice little dynamic events would be a nice touch. When people mention having more stuff to do at peace time... I don't think they just want to click a button (Factions) they want to...direct the flow of their nation a bit more. I feel like these events would be a little more exciting.

Too much click to improve isn't exactly the right direction imo

While I sort of agree with you - dynamic event chains having an eventual impact upon your governance/heir would be nice - this is also just 'clicking'. Using the mouse to click on buttons is the primary method of input for PDS games, so I think that means of criticism is a bit ridiculous, particularly when people mention VicII as a shining beacon of peacetime mechanics, when those mechanics included, for example, pushing voters towards particular opinions by clicking on one of three or four options.
 
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Thanks Johan. :)

I clicked the dev posts link and saw that lots of little questions were answered that gave insight into the dev strategy rather than simple "yes/no" answers. It was really nice to see because it addresses a lot of questions, even ones that weren't being asked, and even if those answers weren't exactly what people wanted to hear.
 
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