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Hi everyone, and welcome to another Europa Universalis IV development diary. Today we’ll take a look at five new features which will be in the new Rights of Man expansion.

First of all.. Disinherit!
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Now when you have these no good heirs, like a certain prince of Castille, you now have an option to deal with them. At any time, if your prestige is positive, you can chose to disinherit your current heir, for a mere cost of 50 prestige. Now we like to think of it as the heir becoming a happy farmer somewhere, but the people in the iron-mask industry need employment after all. The drawback of disinheriting, besides losing 50 prestige, is the fact that you will be without an heir after it..


The second feature is the Prussian Monarchy, a rather cool special government.
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Whenever you form Prussia, you will change into a Prussian Monarchy, a government that was describes as an army with a state, not as a state with an army. So what does the Prussian Monarchy give you. Well, first of all, all Prussian Rulers will have a minimum of 3 in MIL. This alone gives you more military monarch power to spend on policies, ideas & technology on average. The government form in itself reduces unrest by 2 and war exhaustion by 0.02 each month, with autonomy reduction based on the rank.

The coolest part of this government form is the fact that it is a militarised society. This has a rating of 0-100%, where army tradition and legitimacy increases it, while each province you own decrease it. You can also at any time spend 50 military power to gain 10 militarization.

At 100 % militarized society, you gain +10% discipline, 33% cheaper army maintenance and 33% quicker manpower recovery.

Prussia with Rights of Man will be a taller state, that can punch far above its weight, and require a bit of a different playing strategie.


Our third feature is Strengthen Government.
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This is basically an ability to have greater control of your government. For a mere 100 military power, you can at any time boost your legitimacy, devotion, horde unity or republican tradition. Republican Tradition is increased by 3%, while all the other is increased by 10.


The fourth feature of today is Abandon Personal Union.
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This is a new diplomatic action, which is available for the senior in a personal union. Sometimes a union is not worth keeping, as the risks of a dangerous war may be too high, or you know they will win an independence war anyway. The overlord will lose some prestige, and depending on the subjects liberty desire, they will not even dislike you for giving them freedom.


And the fifth and final feature is Debase Currency.
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This is a possibility to quickly get some money, without any interest to pay back, or other immediate drawbacks.. Except … for some minor corruption..

Basically, you get a free loan amount of money for just 2 corruption.


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And as a free feature, as a apart of the 1.18-Prussia patch, we’re adding over 20 new DHE just for Prussia & Brandenburg, putting them on par with other tier 1 nations..

Next week, Jake will talk about the changes to Revolutionary Republics.
 
I seriously wonder what were they thinking while naming this expansion. Perhaps they came up with the name first and didn't want to change it during the development?
Johan mentioned in the feature stream the other day that they will go more into the reason it is called "Rights of Man" at a later time. I would imagine that it will have something to do with the Revolutionary Factions.
 
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EUIV is about alternate history, yet the devs are making country-particular events and government. It shouldn't be too difficult to pinpoint some characteristics of those countries and make them the trigger for those special things to happen.

I dislike the fact that you are stuck with that government. It should be a choice. Also, other countries should have some way to become that way. After all, it's supposed to be a "militaristic government", so maybe small/medium countries which have more MIL development than the other two combined (for example) could get it.

The Ottomans are similar. They get a new government form affecting the way they get an heir. Why couldn't Karaman or even the Mamluks have it, given some choices?
 
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That's probably because such unions hardly ever happened - at least I don't remember something like that.
This option is most likely there for game purposes only - it's tiresome to have a big, useless union partner who won't help you in wars and can't be integrated. The diplomatic action is probably also gonna work on vassals - Johan announced it first in this thread about unloyal subjects.
It did happen, though I am not sure how often.
Off the top of my head I can think of several examples where HRE rulers inherited realms outside the HRE thereby leading to those bigger countries getting a PU over HRE principalities.

The first example I thought of was Christopher of Bavaria who was king of the Kalmar Union from 1440 to 1448 and also held HRE principalities. He at least was count of the Palatinate-Neumarkt, but he might also have held some lands in Bavaria. He at least claimed the title duke of Bavaria and the Bavarian coat of arms were incorporated into the Danish coat of arms (which is the only time that ever happened). Now those HRE lands he brought in were lost when he died, but that wasn't due to the next king saying "Southern Germany is too far away", but because Christopher of Bavaria died heirless and another dynasty took over Denmark whereas some other, to me unknown, heirs took over the German lands.
Similarly Erik of Pomerania brought in Pomerania as king (or rather he would have had he not been deposed in favour of Christopher of Bavaria). Now those would be essentially contiguous with the rest of the Kalmar Union so that is different, but it is an example of a foreign king being high up the line of succession of other titles.

And the Prussian Hohenzollerns, afaik, could have inherited the Hohenzollern lands in southern Germany had those Hohenzollern lines there died out. Doubt Brandenburg/Prussia would have just said no to them. And there is bound to be HRE principalities inheriting and keeping HRE lands far away.
And the UK was inherited by the rulers of Hannover leading to a PU, but that could just as well have been the rulers of say Saxony inheriting it. I really doubt that wouldn't have led to a similar PU. And here the PU wasn't broken due to faraway lands, but because Victoria as a woman couldn't inherit Hannover.

And wasn't there something about the Luxembourgs around 1400 both ruling Bohemia and Luxembourg? If so were both then at some point held by the same person and if so why did the PU break?

My point is that I am certain there are many examples where a PU between faraway lands happened and it wasn't just dissolved due to it being far away, but either lasted or broke due to succession issues or war. And the examples I could think of of the top of my head supports that.




Though you are fully correct that it is for gameplay reasons. I still think that it is a bad implementation though. I would rather have it was more like that you can choose not to enter a war declared on the PU. I.e. you inherit some HRE lands which are completely outside your access. Some local power thinks they look yummy and attacks. You then have the option to not enter the war declared on your PU thereby essentially leaving the to their faith. If something is left after the war your PU is kept over those lands, though you might see a relations penalty. That in my opinion would give the same game play result while being much more realistic in that you don't just give up on faraway lands on default, but if they get attacked by a country you either can't default or is too far away for your main armies to effectively reach it you can decide to have your main lands stay out of the conflict.
 
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This is why it is called a game ;) mechanics are meant to be simplistic, straightforward - not realistic by default.
Yeah, they should rename ships in the game to airplanes- it doesn't matter if that doesn't really correspond with what they do- our standards are simple enough that it doesn't matter ;)
 
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It's so weird to me that advisors have portraits just below, but the rulers and heirs don't. I really want ruler portraits. I'd buy a separate DLC just for that. Will a disinherited heir be able to form a faction or something? They probably should be able to. Strengthen Government seems kind of gamey to me. What exactly is that supposed to represent? Not sure that makes sense or is necessary. Why doesn't debase currency increase inflation? That's obviously what it should do.
 
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The main thing I loathe about the Prussian change is that... it has absolutely nothing to do with Prussia. Sure, it's a cute mechanic. But it is fallaciously and spuriously applied to Prussia (or Brandenberg-Prussia) as a historical Duchy and/or Kingdom.

What part of Gott mit uns sounds friendly and content within its borders? What part of "irredentism" do the devs at Paradox not understand?

Prussia was built on expansion. Not the opposite. It was consistently looking to annex and integrate its nearest neighbors.

Sure, there were a few decades here and there when the sovereign of Prussia was not gobbling up his neighbors, but the overall trend was to consolidate German (and Polish and Lithuanian) lands.

Just compare Prussia of 1525 with Prussia of 1815.

1525: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Rzeczpospolita_Royal_Ducal.png

1815: http://images.slideplayer.com/17/5278835/slides/slide_2.jpg

I mean, there's a whole freaking site dedicated to maps of Prussian expansion:

http://www.zum.de/whkmla/histatlas/germany/haxprussia.html

I just don't get it. I really don't.

No one can realistically claim that Prussia of 1815 was, intrinsically, somehow less effectively militarized than the Prussia of 1525. It just makes absotively no sense.

This is the sort of ahistorical chrome that drives me nutty. It's totally gamey.
 
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If you took over ALL OF GERMANY you'd pay about 1 military point a month to maintain the government.

This government is actually absurdly OP in historical/MP games, and only starts to become weak in single player blob fests.

To the above "PRUSSIA TOTALLY EXPANDED" guy... yeah. The government only starts to become overburdening once you take over France/Germany/Italy/etc. that most people do. If you just go to historical German borders it's easily maintainable and blows the FUCK out of other governments.
 
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Cue Brandenburg/TO gangbang 1445.
Letting Prussia have Konigsburg is going to be the new letting Ottomans have Wien. Prussia forming is going to be like Ming westernizing.

It's not going to BREAK the game I think. I mean Ottoman Janissaries/Mughals/Ming are still probably the biggest 3 broken things in the game (not in that order mind you) but Prussia is clearly going to join those as "this breaks MP" things. We've all just grown to accept that the entire world has to coalition Ottomans if they don't die day 1 though.
 
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If you took over ALL OF GERMANY you'd pay about 1 military point a month to maintain the government....

You're missing the point entirely. Why should Prussian military effectiveness be instrumented at all to the size of their nation?

If you do this for Prussia, why not for Ming, or Otto, or the BBB? It makes no sense historically for any of the expansive nations. And least of all for the aggressively expansive Prussia.

[Edit: Contrarily, why not do it for a country where it would make sense for it to be highly militarized but non-expansionist, like Switzerland.]

You are confusing game balance for verisimilitude. I don't care if it is balanced one way or the other. I do care that it makes absolutely no sense from a historical basis.

It's like saying "we came up with this great trick for the inflation rate of the United States economy" that was somehow based on religious unity.

One simply has nothing to do with the other.
 
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The main thing I loathe about the Prussian change is that... it has absolutely nothing to do with Prussia. Sure, it's a cute mechanic. But it is fallaciously and spuriously applied to Prussia (or Brandenberg-Prussia) as a historical Duchy and/or Kingdom.

What part of Gott mit uns sounds friendly and content within its borders? What part of "irredentism" do the devs at Paradox not understand?

Prussia was built on expansion. Not the opposite. It was consistently looking to annex and integrate its nearest neighbors.

Well let's be honest, nobody goes full goose-step in order to 'grow tall'. The way I see it, it's designed to give small-to-medium Prussia a leg up in becoming a major player, without giving the Early Reich too many more godlike powers. Prussia won't necessarily conquer Europe, but it's very difficult to box the Prussians in while they are still at the 10-20 province level.

You're missing the point entirely. Why should Prussian military effectiveness be instrumented at all to the size of their nation?

Because Prussia can conquer a bunch of less warlike peoples, but it can't just snap its fingers to turn them all into Prussians. (It'd be more fitting if the devs tied the militarisation bar to number of non-Prussian provinces, I suppose.) Make no mistake, Prussia's power will grow as it takes more land, just the power *per development* will decrease slightly.

If you took over ALL OF GERMANY you'd pay about 1 military point a month to maintain the government.

This government is actually absurdly OP in historical/MP games, and only starts to become weak in single player blob fests.

By the looks of it, you'll have to pay something like 0.05 MIL per month per province to maintain the militarization (minus the contribution from AT/legitimacy, but that will be insignificant if you are large). That's a lot more than 1 MIL per month as a Germany-sized country; at some point it'll be better to spend your spare MIL on stacking more policies instead. Still, this ain't no Merchant Republic - you can become a large country by any normal measure before you have to turn off the MIL tap, and even when you do, Prussia with zero militarisation is not exactly lacking in military strength.
 
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I think you guys are missing the point:

Prussia is being pushed in to only taking good lands. Accepted culture, good development... in other words: Germany. Prussia is being pushed AWAY from the normal tricks of mega-ideas countries (Sweden, PLC, France, etc.) in that they dont' want Prussia to just take any land possible and just feed it through their ideas to become unstoppable.

Basically they've added a game reason to play Prussia historically, and not like Russia 2.0 But this time with awesome ideas.
 
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You know what, why doesn't this just work for all governments. Like Absolute Monarchy can eat your sword mana for discipline, and Admin Monarchy can eat your paper mana for more tax/production, etc.

Being unique is fine, but they should provide some way for everyone to participate.
 
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More than anything else, I don't see how this is a "Prussian" mechanic.

If Paradox wanted to apply this to balance out every large and growing power -- so that you had some sort of more efficient, effective small, tall states vs. sprawling empires, then fine. So be it. It's another nerf to WC.

But why is it a Prussian mechanic? That's what makes no sense to me -- at all.

Either this is a general rule that applies to all blobbers, or it doesn't make sense for anyone. It makes no sense to bolt it on specifically and exclusively for Prussia.

p.s. Edit: I am 1000% in agreement with @ywxiao.
 
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Well, in any case, we can't really tell how it'll be until 1.18 hits (or the devs stream ends up with Polish Prussia pushing everyone else's faces in).

That is, at least if any MP groups actually let Brandenburg/TO survive past 1450. More than anything, this paints a massive bulls-eye on Brandenburg/TO even more than before.

Now, Prussian government with Polish ideas? Probably would be too much of a drain on military points to be really feasible but it'd be hilarious in any case.
 
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I think you guys are missing the point:

Prussia is being pushed in to only taking good lands. Accepted culture, good development... in other words: Germany. Prussia is being pushed AWAY from the normal tricks of mega-ideas countries (Sweden, PLC, France, etc.) in that they dont' want Prussia to just take any land possible and just feed it through their ideas to become unstoppable.

In 1.18, accepted culture won't be an issue unless you are huge.

I agree that as Prussia, you'll probably avoid taking the real trash provinces, but that doesn't mean sticking to Germany per se. If you're being selective about how you expand, it's better to think in terms of trade nodes, so optimal Prussia will focus on the Lübeck and English Channel nodes, plus a few important COTs in the neighbouring nodes. Lübeck + EC is a closed system in terms of trade, the nodes immediately upstream cover a vast area of Europe (plus a bunch of Atlantic stuff flowing into EC) and by the time you add manufactories and workshops, it's already approaching Ming levels of wealth. Of course, in MP it will all depend on which countries are controlled by players.
 
Well, in any case, we can't really tell how it'll be until 1.18 hits (or the devs stream ends up with Polish Prussia pushing everyone else's faces in).

That is, at least if any MP groups actually let Brandenburg/TO survive past 1450. More than anything, this paints a massive bulls-eye on Brandenburg/TO even more than before.

Now, Prussian government with Polish ideas? Probably would be too much of a drain on military points to be really feasible but it'd be hilarious in any case.

Well if you want to form it as an eastern tech nation, you can get like -93% cavalry cost I guess? Don't know how that will work with policies and events that bring it to over -100%.
But the main thing about Prussian ideas is that you get easy army tradition to keep your militancy high. It feels like Prussia will make a good March for anyone interested, they only need 3 provinces to form.
 
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