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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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Why not scale the effects from abdication with ruler age? If ruler abdicates at age 14 (provided he's already got a heir), he will suffer -50 prestige/-20 legitimacy, if he abdicates at 70 I believe on grounds of bad health there is reason enough so he suffers 0 prestige/0 legitimacy. If ruler is age 40, he will suffer a hit interpolated in between those poles, eg (without exact calculus) -25 prestige/-10 legitimacy...

Well, with England I, at one stage had a 17 year old ruler and a 16 year old heir, both called Cecily, and I could abdicate, which doesn't make much sense. Therefore it will be good to require that the ruler has been on the throne for 25 years before abdication is allowed (or reached the age of 60, whichever comes first in my opinion). It also seems to me there are too many women rulers/heirs. It is quite alright that there are some but I think the chances of getting a female heir seem too high at the moment.

Kings would normally favour a male heir and only occasionally would a woman rule. Now it seems 50-50 for male and female and I think 90% chance of a male heir would reflect the times better, taking in to account that a king would virtually always favour his oldest son as heir and forego the older sisters, unless there was no male heir..
Makes sense. Scaling from no penalty at an old age, perhaps 70 as you said, to more penalty the younger the ruler seems logical.

This actually touches an important aspect of EU IV which is WHOLLY defunct: a logical dynastic tree.

I'm not saying EU IV should (though be my guest ;)) take it as deep as CK II, but lets face it that when you are Renaissance France - where you know that for a fact primogeniture is an established fact - it is ridiculously illegocial to have a ruler and an heir only 10 years apart... Often playing EU IV I get the impression that the world is plagued by near absolute infant mortality and that succession is in 3/4 of the cases from brother to brother. When heirs magically die at the age of 44 it turns out they had NO offspring and so on...
If we are doing something about dynasties, let's do something about this as well.
 
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Sorry if this has already been discussed but why does an event for the Ottomans, Muslims, have a bishop for its image? I'd love to see proper Muslim photos and ceremonies rather than just generic catholic ones.
 
Sorry if this has already been discussed but why does an event for the Ottomans, Muslims, have a bishop for its image? I'd love to see proper Muslim photos and ceremonies rather than just generic catholic ones.
The art team hasn't completed the event portraits yet
 
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Personally i think that Paradox should add some more flavor to the boring Siberian clan council countries. Like give them some cool events, i think it would be cool to be relocated to the new world even. At this patch the Siberian clan councils are extremely boring, they isnt much special about them other than their government type and you pretty much just get to wait around until the Russians or other Chinese show up. Please Paradox rework these guys.
 
Personally i think that Paradox should add some more flavor to the boring Siberian clan council countries. Like give them some cool events, i think it would be cool to be relocated to the new world even. At this patch the Siberian clan councils are extremely boring, they isnt much special about them other than their government type and you pretty much just get to wait around until the Russians or other Chinese show up. Please Paradox rework these guys.

Or better yet, remove them and allocate their tags for areas more in need of them.
 
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Personally i think that Paradox should add some more flavor to the boring Siberian clan council countries. Like give them some cool events, i think it would be cool to be relocated to the new world even. At this patch the Siberian clan councils are extremely boring, they isnt much special about them other than their government type and you pretty much just get to wait around until the Russians or other Chinese show up. Please Paradox rework these guys.


Events are the sugar on the donut. As long as there is no donut sugar won't fix them.

To make them good they need a lot of neighbours to fight, some fun mechanics etc etc.
 
Are you considering adding Ottoman royal marriages with neighboring Christian countries? Ottomans have effectively used royal marriages to secure alliances and gain provinces as legal dowry. Osmanoglu family had numerous royal ties with both Palaiologos and Kantakouzenos of Byzantine Empire. The competing royal families of Bulgaria, Serbia and Trebizond have also married their princesses to the Ottomans.
 
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Are you considering adding Ottoman royal marriages with neighboring Christian countries? Ottomans have effectively used royal marriages to secure alliances and gain provinces as legal dowry. Osmanoglu family had numerous royal ties with both Palaiologos and Kantakouzenos of Byzantine Empire. The competing royal families of Bulgaria, Serbia and Trebizond have also married their princesses to the Ottomans.

It can be better argued that that was more on the initiative of the Christian countries themselves so they wouldn't get killed than the Ottomans.
 
It can be better argued that that was more on the initiative of the Christian countries themselves so they wouldn't get killed than the Ottomans.
Be it as it may, currently the game doesn't allow interfaith royal marriages. It's funny to think Mehmed II had more Greek and Serbian blood than Turkish. :eek:
 
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It can be better argued that that was more on the initiative of the Christian countries themselves so they wouldn't get killed than the Ottomans.
Even better. Instead of a single country mechanic you have one that applies to every single small country near a powerful one that isn't of their religious group.
 
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Be it as it may, currently the game doesn't allow interfaith royal marriages. It's funny to think Mehmed II had more Greek and Serbian blood than Turkish. :eek:

True, though I'm pretty sure he still thought of himself as being Turkish.

Even better. Instead of a single country mechanic you have one that applies to every single small country near a powerful one that isn't of their religious group.

That's an interesting idea, but I doubt it's effectiveness. As long as RMs cost a dip slot, then I doubt a much larger country is going to accept a RM offer from a OPM on its borders when it would be much easier to just conquer it.
 
Mehmet my son.....

But I agree, the harem mechanic would be great in the far east for some places like japan.
 
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Mehmet my son.....

But I agree, the harem mechanic would be great in the far east for some places like japan.

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.
 
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Be it as it may, currently the game doesn't allow interfaith royal marriages. It's funny to think Mehmed II had more Greek and Serbian blood than Turkish. :eek:


Actually we allow it for everyone except Christians (who get personal unions).
 
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One thing, to be historical, Ming also must have its monarchs from the Zhu Family, if ruling family changed, the dynasty of China would change, that means the name of Chinese Country would change. At least, it was impossible for an Asin Gioro or other non-Han family names to become the ruling ones of Ming in a peaceful way like by marriage.
 
That's an interesting idea, but I doubt it's effectiveness. As long as RMs cost a dip slot, then I doubt a much larger country is going to accept a RM offer from a OPM on its borders when it would be much easier to just conquer it.
So change that, since only Christians get PUs have RMs cost a diplo slot only between two Christian countries and allow them to marry with other faiths too.
 
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Actually we allow it for everyone except Christians (who get personal unions).
Would you be able to restrict personal unions to Christians only but allow royal marriages with the Ottomans? It was more like the tradition than just an exception and it would also make this paid feature historically accurate.
 
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1.Flavour is always welcome :)

3.Abdication :O That was sooo needed. I wonder if you can abdicate as a Theocracy/Republic/Papacy.

3. I see some nice UI Improvments. Like the Advisor bonuses icons or the action of diplomat showing (or was it that way?).

4. Yes! the new peace option is nice. More peace options is always better!

3. About the next DD. Nice i spotted the 2 new alerts. Can't wait.
why would you abdicate as a republic when you can just wait a few years for the next election?
 
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why would you abdicate as a republic when you can just wait a few years for the next election?

Well, there is a very small precedent for Theocracies (though I feel the penalties should be a bit more severe).