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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.
 
To be honest the most exciting part for me is the new situation in the Low Countries. Wonder how it will work out, being able to start as Holland would be nice. Makes kind of sense too as Holland waged war on the Hansa just prior to EU4 start date (which they won!), with Burgundy's permission.
 
To be honest the most exciting part for me is the new situation in the Low Countries. Wonder how it will work out, being able to start as Holland would be nice. Makes kind of sense too as Holland waged war on the Hansa just prior to EU4 start date (which they won!), with Burgundy's permission.

Wait, so Holland was independent in 1444? :0
 
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.

People with parlamentary systems also use the term "parlamentary system" to destinguish them from your kind.
 
That's great! I bet this'll give the Netherlands a bigger chance of forming.
Does anyone know how the Burgundian Inheritance will be affected? (Sorry if this has been asked before, haven't read all of the thread)
I don't know but assuming the realm now includes personal unions, I could imagine they could script a transfer of PU ownership to Austria, while maybe still giving France the French culture provinces outright like before. The historical outcome should be easier to pull off actually. I am excited!
 
It might be that 'burgundy' will be a special case though. The PU shouldn't break on monarch death, it should only break on monarch death in combat at which PU then transfer to Austria.
 
It looks like a good start but I do hope it's more developed. I'm not really sure about that legitimacy/tradition lost for having no debate as it doesn't really make sense, and I think that not all seats should automatically be against a debate (for example, I imagine that provinces in the line of fire of a war would probably be quite happy to support the war effort for fear of getting occupied). I do hope that there are events or mechanics for the relationship between the monarch and Parliament, progressing towards constitutionalism or absolutism and of course tying into the English Civil War.
 
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Whilst I agree on this point I think this just shows how the 'parliament' wasn't much of an influence and dictated to by the Kings council. Parliaments only real control was taxation unless the monarch was particularly weak (low prestige or legitimacy?). The acts above would suggest that parliament was able to increase legitimacy, so we have that effect and changes to taxation.
Taxation was a *huge* deal, though. Taxation and revenue are the central question of European statecraft in this period: warfare (in particular) got far, far more expensive and different states came up with different ways of keeping the state financially afloat. England's (broadly) was Parliament, and the relationship it created between the monarch and the aristocracy was pretty unique in Europe of the time, and it goes right back to King John and the Magna Carta. The Tudors got a bit of a pass by confiscating the wealth of Catholic monasteries, but by the time the Stuarts came on the scene, that money was gone.

Perhaps parliament shouldn't have any further power unless the king/queen had very low prestige or legitimacy as it was only in the 1600s that problems or disagreements started between parliament and monarchy. Could this be modelled by the English Civil War - i.e. they only get a parliament when this event fires?
Hardly. Parliament was born of a disagreement between the aristocracy and the King (which lead to the Magna Carta and the First Baron's War). It effectively took over the government of Henry III, deposed Edward II and crowned his son Edward III, cast out the ministers of Richard II and eventually crowned his successor Henry IV. (They were also repeatedly called upon to affirm and legitimize new claimants during the Wars of the Roses.)

Then the Tudors cashed in on the monasteries, and then oh boy the Stuarts came to town and we all know how that ended.
 
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 happened because Scotland was bankrupt and none of Queen Anne's children survived her, making it possible that the personal union would end on her death.
 
If they've actually turned Burgundy into a mess of PUs they better have changed the current rules regarding Subjects and Annexation because otherwise if you still get Junior PUs when annexing the Senior all they did was give France the ability to effortlessly conquer the entire Netherlands in 1 maybe 2 wars.
 
As other posters said, Monarchic Constitutionalism is not a conceft appliable in 1444; it would belong to the last leg of the EU4 timeframe.
Actually, monarchic constitutionalism was the default during the Middle Ages in Europe. Absolutism was a creation of later centuries, attempts to impose absolutism usually met with massive resistance, and failure was frequent.