Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis. This time we have a feature for Common Sens, that is so large that it is spread over two weeks of development diaries. It is how we interact with your subject states.

In the subjects overview screen, there is now an additional button where you can open up an interaction menu with all your subjects.

Today we’ll talk about the tools you have regarding vassals, marches and lesser union partners.

Placate Local Rulers
This can be done on both vassals and marches, and lets you pay prestige (if you have positive prestige), to reduce the liberty desire of that subject by 10%.

Embargo Rivals
This is a toggle you can put on any subject. If it is on they will embargo all your rivals as quickly as their diplomats can travel. However, this increases their liberty desire by 5% while active.

Place Relative on Throne
This can only be done on vassals, and only when they have a regency. You can replace the regency with a ruler from your own dynasty.

Enforce Religion
This can only be done on vassals, unions and marches. This is possible if the subject is in your religious group, have less than 50% of Liberty Desire, and you have positive relations. Of course, this increases Liberty Desire by 50%, so its something you have to evaluate when it is desirable to do.

Scutage
This is a toggle that can be set to on or off on a vassal. When it is on, they will not be called into wars, unless declared war upon. However, they will provide 50% more of its income to you.

Subsidize Armies
This is a toggle in marches, where if on, you will send up to 10% of your manpower to them each month, to fill up their manpower pool.

Fortify March
This allows you to build or upgrade a fort in a march, where you as overlord fronts the build costs.

Enforce Culture
This is the option if you got some diplomatic power to burn. You can swap the primary culture of a lesser union partner to your culture for a power cost, but this is only doable if they are below 50% liberty desire and it will increase it by 50% as well.

Siphon Income
Unions usually do not provide money to their overlord, but history is full of rulers who took from one part of their realm to provide for another. This action lets you take 50% of a lesser union partners yearly income if you have positive relations. It will increase liberty desire by 10% but also reduce relations rather dramatically.

Support Loyalists
Unions don’t have any local ruler that needs to be placated, so instead you have a toggle where you spend 10% of their monthly income each month, while reducing liberty desire by 20% as long as its active.

Next week we’ll talk about protectorates, trade companies and colonial nations, and their unique actions.

 

[OldmansHQ]

It's all about options, it's better to have them than not to have them. They may be hugely situational but it's still nice when those situations arise.

Having more options just for the sake of quantity is terrible from design point of view, because it devalues the satisfaction of every click made. Being able to change religion is of course nice, but is it worth increased by 50% LD, which makes the vassal pretty much useless? And it's sure to get rebellions which you will have to stop and lose your manpower and money. Same for the increase in money. If your balance is +50 then increasing it by 1 ducat for the cost of not having 10 additional meat-shields siegeing or relieving sieges or taking damage in place of your men doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade off.

Unlike the new fortress mechanic, I don't see these features having any real - practical - impact on the game. Which means they're kind of like marches, it's cool that they're there, but next to a typical vassal which can be annexed pretty much any time, they don't seem all that special, the trade off isn't practical. I guess Fortify March could be useful? If marches were more useful in general... Subsidize Armies? Why in the world would you ever give away 10% of your manpower each month (it's not even monthly MP!) to an AI subject nation who doesn't have the slightest clue about conserving MP? Besides it's a march, it's supposed to be great at replenishing MP by default. I don't get it :/. I'm sorry, I really don't.

 

[CassCD]

I wonder if Paradox knows that this will make it easier for Denmark to keep Sweden down. Nobody tell Wiz, guys.

 

[zdlugasz]

How's it OP? It's not like it will guarantee you that your vassal actually culture converts anything.

Western nations swims in DIP points. Obviously I do not know new development thing, but as in 1.11 Austria, Spain, Sweden, ... regularly culture convert.

 

[Violent AI]

Generally AIs will use marches for borders with powerful rivals.

Only rivals or powerful nations in general?

 

[keynes2.0]

I dont get the point. Sure in theory the overlord should be able to influence these things but none of this strikes me as good gameplay mechanics.

 

[spinoza013]

Look at the fortress cities of Antwerp and Utrecht. Glorious

 

[lolada]

Lots of liberty desire features, i suppose its good to have option to reduce LD. We were lacking in this department badly. We also couldn't get much from vassals, now there are options to earn extra $$.

Giving 10% manpower to marches is a bit weird If we are full on manpower and our march is killing their units stupidly this might help. If the player has large enough country to have surplus manpower then he doesn't need marches at all. This feature looks redundant.

 

[grommile]

Having more options just for the sake of quantity is terrible from design point of view, because it devalues the satisfaction of every click made. Being able to change religion is of course nice, but is it worth increased by 50% LD, which makes the vassal pretty much useless?

See Wiz's response on page 4 of this thread. The 50% LD bump decays over time.

 

[LiberiusX]

Meh, I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping all these references to interacting with our "subjects" entailed some kind of domestic politics. Honestly, looks like more of the same.

 

[Rain Envy]

Meh, I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping all these references to interacting with our "subjects" entailed some kind of domestic politics. Honestly, looks like more of the same.

There can always be more but I believe this is a step in the right direction. I honestly just want more events to pop up between nations you have a relationship with. Interesting event chains similar to CK2.

 

[RickMP80]

Awesome!

 

[Tom013]

Having more options just for the sake of quantity is terrible from design point of view, because it devalues the satisfaction of every click made.

I agree with the first clause here -- quantity for quantity's sake is rarely good. As they say, an engineer is done not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away, and while not perfectly transferable, it's a principle not totally inapplicable to game design.

That said, I disagree with your second clause. More options alone do not devalue others, at least not if they are well-balanced.

Vassal interaction always seemed pretty hollow to me. Loyalty desire made it a bit better, but it was still really rather simplified. Be stronger, use your diplomat to improve opinion, hang out for a couple decades.

Changing religion is something that was asked for by a lot of people, so it was at least publicly desired. It's not an "always good" thing, but it shouldn't be. It was particularly annoying when they would squash rebels of your religion instead of converting. Fortify march seems good given the new fort system, which should hopefully make marches themselves more useful. And if the options for placating vassals are balanced with other improvements to keep vassals from loving you forever, I can see value there as well.

I wouldn't say any of these strike me as some "Holy Grail" of enhancements, but together with continued improvement to other elements, I don't see any of them as superfluous and certainly not "devaluing" other clicks I might make...

 

[Garevel]

Nobody at works gets why i'm so happy right now

 

[jebates]

Subsidize Armies
Shouldn't this work the other way around?

Enforce Culture
Oh lord this could be a disaster. Change a country's culture and they won't be able to revolt or be released. PU France in the 100 years war (and lose them soon after) and their colonies all game will be English... not to mention the unintended consequences of even more culture conversion.

 

[lolada]

Subsidize Armies
Shouldn't this work the other way around?

Enforce Culture
Oh lord this could be a disaster. Change a country's culture and they won't be able to revolt or be released. PU France in the 100 years war (and lose them soon after) and their colonies all game will be English... not to mention the unintended consequences of even more culture conversion.

Yup, there is some logic in this, marches could give part of their manpower to their overlord.

 

[Sexual Velociraptor]

Marches no longer lose their bonuses when growing over the development limit.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love you guys!

 

[Hari ganesh]

Paradox you are the best.

 

[ProxyCell]

@Johan :
I have a question regarding the "change of culture" - Are the requisites for this moddable? Like can I say "vassal must be of same group as liege"?
If not, will you make it moddable?

 

[josh127]

Nice changes. It should give subjects a different feel from interacting with other nations, looks as though it's going to give them all unique options, and doesn't look like anything OP for or against you. I also like the impacts on LD, and the fact that there's options for both positive and negative.

Of course, overall I'm just happy to be able to tell my vassals to stay out of my wars!

 

[net.split]

Having more options just for the sake of quantity is terrible from design point of view, because it devalues the satisfaction of every click made. Being able to change religion is of course nice, but is it worth increased by 50% LD, which makes the vassal pretty much useless? And it's sure to get rebellions which you will have to stop and lose your manpower and money. Same for the increase in money. If your balance is +50 then increasing it by 1 ducat for the cost of not having 10 additional meat-shields siegeing or relieving sieges or taking damage in place of your men doesn't seem like a worthwhile trade off.

Unlike the new fortress mechanic, I don't see these features having any real - practical - impact on the game. Which means they're kind of like marches, it's cool that they're there, but next to a typical vassal which can be annexed pretty much any time, they don't seem all that special, the trade off isn't practical. I guess Fortify March could be useful? If marches were more useful in general... Subsidize Armies? Why in the world would you ever give away 10% of your manpower each month (it's not even monthly MP!) to an AI subject nation who doesn't have the slightest clue about conserving MP? Besides it's a march, it's supposed to be great at replenishing MP by default. I don't get it :/. I'm sorry, I really don't.

Marches will be more useful because they are uncapped in development.

The +50% liberty desire isn't that big a deal as long as you pair those buttons with liberty desire reductions, such as throwing some Prestige at the problem, especially if their LD was low to begin with (probably the only circumstance you'd use this).

I think the AI will get more practical use out of Subsidize Armies than the player will. A player is generally superior at managing militaries, but AIs are effectively equivalent with each other.

Actually, playing a March yourself might be pretty fun. You'll be your AI overlord's wrecking ball. Having them sometimes be able to subsidize your manpower is pretty sweet. Plus, they can't integrate you and you can grow unfettered.

...whoa. That's sounding better the more I think about it.