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EU4 - Development Diary - 17th of January 2017

Hello everyone, in today's development diary we’ll go into details about the Age of Absolutism and the Absolutism mechanic. The absolutism mechanic is part of the free patch, while the Age abilities and objectives are part of the expansion.

So, how does the absolutism mechanic now work?

First of all, we’ve removed the Absolute Monarchy government form.

Secondly, administrative efficiency from technology is now 10% from each tech giving it.

Governments now have an “Absolutism” value, which ranges from 0 to 100, and this increases your administrative efficiency with up to 40% and your discipline with up to 5%, and makes foreign cores on you decay 3 times as quick at maximum absolutism.

There is also a maximum value to absolutism a nation can have, which defaults to 65, with legitimacy increasing it up to +20, republics decreasing it by 30, religious unity increasing it by 5, great power by 5, being empire by 5, and several other factors.

Several events and ideas talking about absolutism now affect absolutism either by directly increasing it, or having a yearly increase.

Absolutism is not just a number that ticks up or down like so many others, this is tied into the actions you do as a player.

Doing harsh treatment on rebels, increasing stability and decreasing autonomy in a province each increase absolutism by +1.

Increasing autonomy reduce it by 2, debase currency reduce it by 1, accepting rebel demands reduce it by 10, assigning a seat in parliament by 3 and reducing war exhaustion reduce it by 1.

These numbers will be tweaked during the development, and actions impacting absolutism may be added or removed from this list.

Whats cool for modders is that you can script absolutism impact individually for your age.
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Here is the special things regarding the Age of Absolutism, which lasts from 1620 until 1710.

Rules

Absolutism mechanics are enabled.
English Civil War & Court & Country Disaster, can only happen in this Age.

Objectives
  1. Have 3 Trade Companies
  2. Own and Control at least 3 Universities.
  3. Have 90%+ Absolutism
  4. At least 5 different cultures promoted.
  5. Be Emperor of China
  6. Reach a force-limit of 200 regiments.
  7. Be on victorious side of the religious war.

Abilities
  • 50% shorter unrest impact from changing autonomy (shorter cooldown)
  • +1 Yearly Absolutism
  • 50% cheaper and quicker to change rivals
  • Forts bordering rivals are free to maintain
  • +5% Administrative efficiency
  • Allow Edict “Edict of Abolutism” 10 years less separatism in state.
  • Harsh Treatment 50% cheaper
  • France - 20% extra firedamage
  • Netherlands - 0.2 corruption reduction
  • Sweden - +35% manpower recovery
  • Manchu - +50% Larger Banners
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Next week, we’ll look into the Age of Revolutions.
 
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Will there ever be mechanics to make playing a benevolent ruler interesting?
 
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WOW this Absolutism thing alone is better than all of my suggestions together!

I'm so CRAZY glad with the changes and waiting to the multiplayer match! I think I wanna cry from happiness.... :):):):):) I waited so long to this!!

PARADOX YOU'RE AWESOME!
 
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This age having bonuses to 4 countries seems even more railroady than the previous two ages. A lot can happen between 1444 and 1620 that could mean that history goes a completely different path. What if Manchu doesn't exist for example?
 
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Really liking what I see for the next expansion/patch. I'm very interested to hopefully see what liberalism as a game mechanic is next week. And I can't wait to see how the Chinese Emperor mechanics work. Maybe in the Dev multiplayer later yeah?
 
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Will abslutism allow for government change or is it not related to anything ? Currently, if your republican tradition is very low you become a despot, if your devotion is really low a duchy, but there is no way you can switch otherwise (from duchy to despot, except manually switching, or from republic to duchy, as was the case historically for Florence, which by the way should start with a really low tradition, only through the Tuscany formation decision, but nothing "uncontrolled")
 
This is really really great. Really nice to get mechanics which aren't isolated from what you do, but instead are closely tied into everything and hence affected by your actions. We need more of that kind of mechanics.

Why does Great Britain get that -30 when they're a kingdom? Wasn't it republics getting a -30?
Great Britain was a constitutive monarchy, so the monarch actually had few power and had to rely on vote for war budgets, typically (which prevented some english kings to keep warring on the Netherlands or France in the late 100 years war)
 
This age having bonuses to 4 countries seems even more railroady than the previous two ages. A lot can happen between 1444 and 1620 that could mean that history goes a completely different path. What if Manchu doesn't exist for example?
Definitely agree, which is why I won't buy that expansion. Hopefully the railroady things won't be part of the free patch, only keeping trace of which age we are in, as I really hate such nation bonuses which do not take into account the fact that the country might have become an OPM by the time (for example, I really disliked to lose all my French cores as Burgundy, when it was reduced to a mere 8 province kingdom and I was a 40 province duchy, having split France with England, when I was going to form the Netherlands)
 
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Seems nice except making core decay even faster. I have already doubled the lifetime of claims and cores, I guess I will be multiplying them with three too.

Wouldn't it better to give Sweden high bonuses to mercenaries maintenance/pool instead to represent things during 30 years war?

Also, will Absolutism value be visible on a top panel near stability/prestige etc?
This isn't the 30 years war this is the swedish empire, and this represents something called indelningsverket, a specific institution for making sure that there was always soldiers for sweden's armies, it is why sweden despite having a small population could field armies so efficiently. The swedish empire didnöt really rely on mercenaries that much, instead it formed it's own professional corps of soldiers the caroleans who would become a model for many european professional miliataries i years to come.

I was thinking that, but it still is a monarchy and not a republic so it getting the full republic malus seems a bit strange. Plus they also only get 10 from full legitimacy despite the DD mentioning that others get 20 from full legitimacy. That seems strange.
Because for some reason they keep getting constitutional monarchy as it was in EU4 times mixed up with what it means today, which is also why they don't have the nobles estate.

Possibly due to the English Monarchy being somewhat weak due to (historical) power of the parliament? Does seem a bit much to make it equivalent to a Republic. Sure, the monarchy wasn't as absolute as the French, or even the Swedish, but it wasn't that weak.
Well the Swedish really wasn't absolute except during Gustav III.
 
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I'm eager to see what the China mechanic is. I'm guessing no update to Japan, but China is a start. Looking forward to that DD more than anything on Ages :p

@Johan What affect will the Absolutism have on the French decision and the Polish end of the Elective Monarchy?
 
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"Be emperor of China" This looks pretty good ;)
 
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It's pretty cool, but how does it work without the Ages?
It won't. Absolutism and ages are both free features (it's just splendour that's an expansion-feature)
 
So 3 things I have to write into this reaction:

1. Asia DLC is definitelly confirmed ( officially announced probably 31st January, next DD should be about final Age ), after we saw screen of new models for chinese ships and asian background on image showing us Age of Reformation screen last DD - we can see "Mandate currency" icon.

2.
Manchu - +50% Larger Banners

Just check this https://www.britannica.com/topic/Banner-system

3. My i3-2330 with GTX 520MX was so obsolete that I was forced to stop playing EU IV half year ago due horrible lagging even on lowest graphic setup. No more an issue! I was finally upgrading my PC to i5 6600K with GTX 1060 6GB last week. Now is time to wait for some sale and catch missing DLC MN and RoM ;)
 
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Not really convinced of the strength of the Dutch special power. It's nice, but compared to 20% extra fire damage or 35% extra manpower recovery? .. Not so much.
 
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This really seems like another nerf to republics and buff to monarchs (on top of the insanely useful disniherit ability in the last expansion). I am really hoping that republics get some more interesting mechanics as well at some point (given that they will probably have a hard time getting lots of absolutism).

Also Prussia can now gets to 120% discipline without picking up any military ideas.

Also also I am guessing that the name of this DLC is going to be leviathan.
 
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