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EU4 - Development Diary - 23rd of June 2016

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Hello and welcome to today's development diary for Europa Universalis IV. It's actually a well earned(?) day off for me but I'm doing a once unthinkable thing and working a bit from home. Last week I said we would take a look at a very influential dynasty of the time period. Sorry to disappoint all the Velikopermsky and Dandani fans out there, but I had the Osmanoglus on my mind.

It would be an understatement to say that the Ottomans gave the world a good shaking in this time period. Furthermore, they are one of the more commonly played nations in EUIV. We wanted to give them a little something to bring out their unique flavour since it was always a shame that they are a run-of-the-mill Sultanate. It has also been pointed out on numerous occasions the oddity of a situation where you have the Ottoman nation..without an Osmanoglu at the helm.

So to that end, in the still-unnamed upcoming expansion we have added a unique government type for them: The Ottoman Sultanate.

The Ottoman Sultanate does not generate heirs like normal monarchies do. The ruler of the Ottoman Sultanate will have their own Harem to ensure the dynasty lives on. At the age of 30, your ruler will select one of his sons to be the heir to the throne. They will, of course, be of your dynasty

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So an Ottoman Sultanate shall always be blessed by the strong line of Osmanoglus. That is to say unless the Sultan dies without an heir. In that case, they'll still end up with an Osmanoglu. "Blessed" can be a relative term here.

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There are a couple dozen events accompanying this unique government type to simulate the power struggle and intrigue of such a succession system and should add a couple of fangs to that already formidable Ottomans.

While this is unique to the Ottomans, any modders out there can easily allow this for other government types with the has_harem = yes line.

I feel like we're on a roll when it comes to governments and rulers so here's another thing for today's Development Diary. Abdication.

Yes, it has long been a requested feature in Europa Universalis. When Enrique or his low-stat kind just refuses to die you can abdicate and let your next in line take over. This requires you to have an of-age heir and to have either ruled for 25 years or be 60+ years old. It will come with a considerable hit to your legitimacy/unity and prestige but I think we've all had times where we wanted our monarch to Die Please Die.

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Ottoman Sultanate and Abdication are both paid features in the upcoming expansion which we have magically managed to keep unleaked name-wise.

I've been mentioning a lot of paid features lately but it's good to remind ourselves that with all the paid expansions come free bugfixes and features from the accompanying patch. A small change that will be coming up in 1.18 that I want to share is to do with succession wars. I'm not too happy with how right now, they have two conclusions: Either the new overlord keeps their union or the nation fighting them over it take leadership over the union for themselves. Now, we will add a peace option which simply breaks the union for all parties involved.

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Simple, sensible, and added free in 1.18 for those times where you just want to keep the status quo. Warscore cost scales with the junior partner's size.

Happy midsummer everyone, I'm off to....oh, right, I need to tease upcoming Diaries. Hrmm~ Well, we've touched a lot on rulers but would you believe it, we're not quite done with the changes in the throne room. We'll come to that in the future. As for next week, we'll switch it up on the battlefield. See you then!
 
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The ability to abdicate combined with more traits seem like there is going to be a pretty big haul of stuff for monarchies. Will republics get any changes to make them more interesting as well?
 
The ruler you get in the event for dying without an heir (second picture) is a pretty poor one.
What age are the event spawned heirs? (And on a related note, what happens if your ruler dies when the heir is over 30 years old? Does the "pick an heir" event fire instantly?)
 
The 3 picks are 10 year olds.
If one dies you can pick another one pretty shortly afterwards.
Depending on how that happened you may already have a new heir though.
 
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Finally.

No more Tacettinoglus or some such in the Ottoman Empire.

Thank you.
 
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While I agree, there are three problems: 1); none of the Japanese cultures have dynasty names relevant to the period, 2); that won't really stop the Ashikaga from simply placing their dynasty on a Daimyo's throne (and if we add in the historical occurrence of an adopted Daimyo changing their name to their new family, it would completely negate the whole purpose of the action), and 3); it wouldn't be able to properly represent stuff that happened like Shoni -> Ryuzoji -> Nabeshima, Hosokawa -> Miyoshi, Shiba -> Mogami, Toki -> Saito, etc, due to a deficiency in tags (and I would simply prefer a maximum of one tag per province to cut down on lag). Maybe a solution would be to have each tag represent the particularly powerful families of that province, and have retainer families/a retainer mechanic for the Daimyo Gov. that could help or hurt said Daimyo?
The game can handle tags changing their names while remaining the same tag. Players can do it for their colonial nations, for example. Just need to make that happen automatically for daimyo. Maybe force dynasties to rename themselves if there end up being two daimyo with the same dynasty.
 
No, he just backed Selim in a civil war against his other son. He later had him executed after he was defeated. Pretty sure that's supporting one candidate.
nope
he did it for his own rulership

i repeat it again: the tradition was that the strongest one to sit on the throne. padişah's never chose an heir
tradition was changed very lately, that the oldest son would be the heir.
 

It's government form, not religion issue, so I'd hazard a yes.

They could at least do a little something to properly represent such a prominent, fan favorite faction -- especially when they keep piling on the additions to the Ottomans.

1) England
2) France
3) Ottomans
...
14) Byzantium

Besides that (why I cut the rest of your reply) - I really don't know what do you expect. Yeah, compared to the American DLC the Byzantium one wasn't very good. But it's already there and I really doubt that anyone is going to make another one for EU4.

I don't see a reason why developers should be adding more Byz specific fluff, while I counted 13 nations, which I think can be considered major tags, with less events, not to mention the likes of Teutonic Order and Britanny with barely any fluff.

Scotland, Milan, Morocco, Bohemia (!), Manchu, Aragon (!), Naples, Timmy, Mughals, Bavaria, Novgorod, Hansa/Lubeck
 
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Cheers for the DD DDRJake :D. Changes sound good, more historical depth to Ottos is always a good thing, and those PU war changes sound particularly good to balance-of-power style gameplay (a theme for this patch/DLC combo?) Hope the rest of your day off was more off :).
 
The titles in that message will change depending on what you've conquered so far...

what do you mean? if i done WC as ottomans, the whole world is being written in that message?

i'm pretty sure this event may crash the game in 1820 :p

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Suleiman the Magnificient’s letter to Francis I said:
I, sultan of sultans, king of kings, the shadow of God who bestows the crown to the monarchs on earth, the supreme ruler of the Mediterranean and Black Seas, the Balkans and Anatolia, Azerbaijan, Damascus and Halep, Egypt, Mecca and Medina, Jerusalem, and all of the Arab dominions, and Yemen, and the sultan and the supreme king of many nations,

I am the son of Sultan Selim Khan and grandson of Sultan Bayezid Khan, and you, King Francis, is the governor of the French province.
 
It will change as you conquer more land but (at least for now) only to incorporate the historical titles of the sultan (and not quite all of those).
 
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It's government form, not religion issue, so I'd hazard a yes.

A Christian ruler with a harem? If the Ottos had known it was possible, they might indeed have converted. :)
 
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I have a question. If Italy (1861), Germany (1871), Greece (1832), Romania (1881) etc are. Because the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867) does not exist in the game? It would be a great power rival to consider the Ottomans, Prussia-Germany, Italy, Commonwealth and France. That would be formed with the Austrian and Hungarian territories plus a unique system of government "Dual Monarchy" as well as its related events.
I think "Hapsburg Empire" would be a more appropriate formable country for Austria. Could require something like own/be overlord of Hungary, Bohemia, Kraków, Serbia, Bosnia, and parts of Italy, must have Hapsburg as ruling dynasty... Not sure what bonus you would get from forming it, other than the cool black/yellow flag.
 
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The game can handle tags changing their names while remaining the same tag. Players can do it for their colonial nations, for example. Just need to make that happen automatically for daimyo. Maybe force dynasties to rename themselves if there end up being two daimyo with the same dynasty.

That's a fair point. Adapting the Colonial mechanic of changing your name and flag when a different Dynasty rises to your han's throne sounds like a good idea, if not a bit time consuming. I would prefer that the map get expanded and more Daimyo get added in before we have dynamic Daimyo, though - Japan is long overdue for it.

I think "Hapsburg Empire" would be a more appropriate formable country for Austria. Could require something like own/be overlord of Hungary, Bohemia, Kraków, Serbia, Bosnia, and parts of Italy, must have Hapsburg as ruling dynasty... Not sure what bonus you would get from forming it, other than the cool black/yellow flag.

Or maybe just have an event that promotes the Emperor to an Empire rank if the Empire is dissembled a la Francis II. Really, I'm surprised that the HRE hasn't been touched on in a while given how important it was to the timeframe - the Religious Wars mechanic could later be tied into the Revolution mechanic as a sort of 'Coalition' mechanic where the Emperor and enemies of the Revolutionary target attempt to contain its expansion and restore the status quo - Austria was the most consistent enemy of France on the Continent, after all.
 
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While I agree, there are three problems: 1); none of the Japanese cultures have dynasty names relevant to the period, 2); that won't really stop the Ashikaga from simply placing their dynasty on a Daimyo's throne (and if we add in the historical occurrence of an adopted Daimyo changing their name to their new family, it would completely negate the whole purpose of the action), and 3); it wouldn't be able to properly represent stuff that happened like Shoni -> Ryuzoji -> Nabeshima, Hosokawa -> Miyoshi, Shiba -> Mogami, Toki -> Saito, etc, due to a deficiency in tags (and I would simply prefer a maximum of one tag per province to cut down on lag). Maybe a solution would be to have each tag represent the particularly powerful families of that province, and have retainer families/a retainer mechanic for the Daimyo Gov. that could help or hurt said Daimyo?

For the Japanese Daimyo it is both simpler but at the same time more complicated. The simpler part is that their nation name is identical to their clan name, unlike Ottoman, Ming and Qing, whose nation name is tied to their dynatic name but not the same. The complicated part is that is when their nation name should be change. Like you mention, at that era Japanese seem to care more about their clan name than bloodline. An adopted Daimyo will change his last name to his new clan's one. It not only happened all the time, but was also an effective way to expand. However, there were also many cases the vassal clan overthrowing the overlord clan and claiming the territory of the overlord. In those cases the clan name will be change. There would probably need a more complex system, more events and more importantly, more provinces and Daimyo to actually fully simulate the Sengoku experience.
 
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For the Japanese Daimyo it is both simpler but at the same time more complicated. The simpler part is that their nation name is identical to their clan name, unlike Ottoman, Ming and Qing, whose nation name is tied to their dynatic name but not the same. The complicated part is that is when their nation name should be change. Like you mention, at that era Japanese seem to care more about their clan name than bloodline. An adopted Daimyo will change his last name to his new clan's one. It not only happened all the time, but was also an effective way to expand. However, there were also many cases the vassal clan overthrowing the overlord clan and claiming the territory of the overlord. In those cases the clan name will be change. There would probably need a more complex system, more events and more importantly, more provinces and Daimyo to actually fully simulate the Sengoku experience.

Well, the more I do think about it, the less I feel like a Harem mechanic would actually fit in with the Daimyo. Sure, they had harems, but it was the norm for the eldest son to succeed regardless. Yoshiaki Otomo trying to disinherit Yoshishige (Sorin) Otomo resulted in the Second Floor incident where pro-Yoshishige retainers killed him, Takamoto Mori's death resulted in Terumoto being appointed as nominal clan head and Motonari coming out of retirement, Yoshihisa Amago succeeded Haruhisa Amago (and promptly brought ruin on the clan) despite both his brothers being inifinitely more competent and having more respect, Nobutada Oda's death during Honnoji effectively opened the door for Hideyoshi to puppet the Oda, and Ieyasu had to kill Nobuyasu before he could declare Hidetada heir.

Basically, I don't think that choosing heirs in the sense that its represented in with the Ottoman's harem mechanic would make sense, as trying to disinherit the eldest son or his unexpected death tended to throw clans into chaos since it was the norm to have the eldest son succeed to clan leadership (while it was not uncommon for younger ones to be offered up for adoption) regardless of the circumstances, and incompetent ones were usually overthrown by kin only after they ruled for a while - which also tended to split the clan.