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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.
 
I don't know enough about the Irish Parliament to comment, but like I said, the Scottish Parliament's continued relevance in 1707 was a result of the fact that England and Scotland were in a personal union, and as such Scotland's existing institutions had to be respected by a monarch who was just as much King of Scotland as King of England.

In-game, however, there generally is no PU, and England just kicks the crap out of Scotland and annexes its lands violently instead of diplomatically; that being the case, it is fairly unlikely that a victorious conquering England in-game would give the Scots the same degree of autonomy vis-a-vis a parliament as they had when they were constituent partners of a personal union. The in-game King of England is not, usually, also King of Scotland and thus has no existing duties or obligations towards the Scots in terms of obliging them by granting them the separate Parliament they previously had.

I think it would make sense to just give all of Scotland parliament seats if you form Great Britain, as you said the decision is essentially the act of union. It would be nice to have a decision to represent the "Laws in Wales Act" which officially incorporated Wales into England and granting it access to parliament.

As for the Irish parliament, that does not make much sense either because the English and Irish parliament had always been separate but the Irish one was subservient to the English one and the King of England. The Kingdom of Ireland was not on equal footing with England in the way that Scotland was.
 
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This is a difficult feature to realistically judge. It seems to fit inside the overall theme of taller empires, but the feature is rather limited in scope. I guess England will benefit, though, which is a very good thing.
 
Interesting but gimmicky, and sadly Toothless right now it seems. 20 Prestige is hardly a scary penalty. Losing a Debate should lose a lot of legitimacy and even stability, scaling with how many Seats Opposed the Debate.

In addition, I must echo the sentiment that Parliament should have more of a say in the general situation of the country. Very few Kings willingly embraced Constitutionalism because doing so actually limited their power, something which goes sadly unrepresented in this game, and continues to be unrepresented in this system, and to an extend it seven unrepresented in Victoria 2.

For this system, every Seat should be able to have a "Grievance" with the current state of the Country. So long as this Seat has such a Grievance, you will have a Scaling Increase to Stability Cost, scaling with the development of the Province, as well as a scaling drain on Legitimacy and Prestige.

One Seat might take issue with your Religion if they are a Heretic. Another might take issue to you entering into a prolonged Relation with someone they don't like, for instance a province with a Center of Trade might not like you entering into a Trade Agreement with another country who has a Center of Trade in the same Region. A Protestant Seat might object to a Royal Marriage with a Catholic Country. Or perhaps one Seat with a Naval Manufactory doesn't like that your Naval Tradition is so low, or your Navy so much smaller than your Force Limits. Basically, Seats should be able to give you "Mini-Missions" as it were.

Other Seats might not approve of an ongoing war, and if that is the case will provide a penalty to your War Exhaustion and possibly to Army or Navy Morale and even Force Limits if enough Seats are opposed. You can wage an unpopular War, but your armies will not be doing so hot and if enough Seats opposed the war you may take a Stability hit when declaring the war.

Fortunately you will be able to address these Grievances in much the same way as getting the seat to Pass a Debate, just realize that giving in will provide an on-going cost until the Grievance is resolved. This way the system can work against you, but not outright prevent actions you might want to take since apparently the current generation of gamers just can't handle that sort of thing. And to give you more incentive to actually do what they want, resolving a Grievance for a Seat should provide a 10-year event modifier which will not only make it vastly less likely for them to develop a new Grievance, but make it cheaper to get them to vote your way on a Debate, possibly to the point of making it completely free.

Oh with one exception; Once you've gotten to a Constitutional Monarchy or have an English Monarchy, you shouldn't be able to change out of that government type without a Civil War.

And lastly, if Legitimacy gets too low or enough provinces have long-standing Grievances there should be a very real prospect of a Civil War, which for England Specifically would lead to their fancy pants unique Civil War which will put England either permanently in Constitutionalism, or shift them to an Absolute Monarchy.
 
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Well, in fairness, Ireland in 1444 isn't really that well represented. There were very powerful de jure subjects of England yet de facto independent Normano-Irish Earls across the centre of the country and Dublin (the Pale) effectively just as an enclave similar to how Calais ended up for England in France.
 
Not sold on the whole thing being the next expansion, seems a bit trivial and I'm a bit sceptical of the quality this time. Definitely will have to see more, to see whether it's worth paying. Parliaments great and everything but for an expansion? To be honest, it seems useless, it doesn't bring anything to the game.
 
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"With all due respect", you should read dev diaries closely and never assume something will work a certain way when the diary doesn't event hint at it.

Good advice. Ever followed it?
 
ONE MOAR THING! You should only be able to give Seats in Parliament to provinces with Primary/Accepted/Group Cultures. Or to Colonial Nations, I really like the idea of being able to give Seats to Colonial Nations.
 
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From what I read the Act of Union was an attempt to stuff the english parliament with scottish ministers. The King of that personal union was from Scotland, not England. He chose to sit down south because it was the stronger seat of power. He didn't have to keep Scotland separate out of respect for an institution. Allegedly he was trying his damnedest to corrupt the english institution with scottish manpower.

The acts of union was under Queen Anne. She was a Stuart being the daughter of the deposed James II. But she was brought up as English she said "As I know my heart to be entirely English, I can very sincerely assure you there is not anything you can expect or desire from me which I shall not be ready to do for the happiness and prosperity of England."
So trying to stuff the parliament with Scots is unlikely.

The Acts of union were essentially the result of Scottish nobles getting into debt over the Darien adventure and subsequently selling Scotland out for a bailout of English money to the tune of about £400,000
 
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When Henry IV and Richard III seized power, they both took care to secure their power by having an Act of Parliament confirm them as King. Nobody thought to summon the Estates General to confirm Henry V as King of France.

And what?

Was there the slimmest chance those guys above would have not became kings if the parliament chose otherwise?

Was ever a monarch whose house of common gave trouble to (as opposed to be a collection of 'yes-men')?

Besides, it's difficult to confirm you are king of a place which is not your nations...

Either the Henry V guy's missed confirmation was the reason why he did not rule France, or the reasons to determine whether he would have ruled it or not lie very far from his parliament.

As other posters said, Monarchic Constitutionalism is not a conceft appliable in 1444; it would belong to the last leg of the EU4 timeframe.
 
Yes, but something similar should exist for many governments around europe, for example things to rapresent the orders and the privilegia, the nobility, the church, have to deal with them to raise taxes (in theory also declare war) etc... I hope something will be added for all. Also the revolutionary government and the more modern government should have a somekind of elective institutions. (This also for various type of replublic in free cities and merchant republic.).
 
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As I said in my earlier comment on this thread, I was disappointed to see that there isn't a transition to where Parliament becomes more important and general elections are held, Cabinet develops, etc. in other words, the English/British government after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. But perhaps in EU5, this parliament mechanics could be further developed to provide the Cabinet, general elections where you could spend gold or MPs (or both) to try to influence its outcome towards a faction or parties you want which becomes more expensive to represent waning Crown influence on elections, etc.
 
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All our future expansions will be in 15-20 range.

I have no problem with this prices if the expansion are less and more full of improvements, but personally is not very cheap actually, have the game full updated is very difficult. At least for me is difficult to be updated to the last expansion.

If you have to do this prices everytime at least consider this option: Include all cosmetic DLC in one major DLC, so at least we have less things to buy.
 
Do anyone has an idea why is the last diary the power prejection was replaced with a flag symbol (and the value was at 99 not credible for PP) and now the sword is back (at 0, as expected)?
 
I hope this DLC will be called 'Leviathan' as a reference to famous Hobbes' work on political systems.

Do anyone has an idea why is the last diary the power prejection was replaced with a flag symbol (and the value was at 99 not credible for PP) and now the sword is back (at 0, as expected)?

It is Liberty Desire, appears if you are vassal/colonial nation/etc
 
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Wiz wants to call it that, due to the large amount of huge changes.. And we're updating the engine as well.

I just like having larger numbers.

I second what others have already said. If it's possible, I (and others) would like to hear about the new engine upgrades ~been waiting to hear something after reading some HoI4 dev-diaries~.
 
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.

Will colonial nations need a Seat in Parliament? Hopefully the answer is yes, but is not forced like non-overseas cores. My reasoning for this would like the American Colonies chant: "No taxation without representation". Failure to give enough seats to a colonial nation will result in an increase of liberty desire for that colonial nation.
 
I think I can see the rationale behind losing legitimacy by not consulting Parliament. Given that this feature is constricted to Constitutional Monarchies and Constitutional Republics, not at least consulting Parliament can be seen as dictatorial and reduce the mandate of the government in the eyes of the electorate and the general populace.

Except what this seems to represent is the monarch asking parliament for extraordinary demands. It says "Increase taxes", not "Collect normal taxes". That means that using this mechanic represents using parliament for unusual demands, which went against the English ideal of the king living off of his own expenses. We can assume the day-to-day government is going on as usual if we don't start these debates for extraordinary revenues/bonuses in parliament. Thus it should logically not decrease legitimacy.
 
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Do anyone has an idea why is the last diary the power prejection was replaced with a flag symbol (and the value was at 99 not credible for PP) and now the sword is back (at 0, as expected)?

It think that was the current liberty desire of Sweden, which was the nation they were playing at the the time.
 
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The government USA will have when they exist, will have a Parliament.
Could we get an alternative localization for the USA's parliament calling it "Congress"? I wouldn't be too broken up about it if we didn't, but we often use terms like "parliamentary system" to distinguish British-style legislatures from our own.
 
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