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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 be replacement objectives for "Be Emperor of China"/"Be on victorious side of the religious war" if you are nowhere near China/Europe? I'm asking because you did show a replacement for New World countries in the Age of Discovery. Or was that just for modding purposes?
 
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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?
Parliament?
 
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?


Well, Japan has some new provinces at least!
I imagine there would be an overhaul of the way Japan works too, seeing as China is getting such an overhaul.
 
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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?

English Monarchy currently is at -30.
 
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I'm very interested to hopefully see what liberalism as a game mechanic is next week.
I really hope it's a mechanic, but there is the possibility that he just referred to the liberalism event chain (is it a disaster? Can't remember.)

Parliament?
Each parliamentary seat gives -3; but Johan already replied.
 
I'm a bit skeptical of the balance here for Absolutism in SP; even if it's only two ages, it represents a huge chunk of the total Administrative Efficiency you can get in a game (given that it's not available at all until tech 17) and hence the amount of expanding you can do. Administrative Efficiency is an insanely powerful modifier in SP blob mode, because it affects coring cost, warscore cost and overextension (any one of those would be a big deal, never mind all three together). That wasn't a big deal before, because Administrative Efficiency was something that just happened over the course of the game, through technology; the late game is simply faster than the early game. But now it's something you can work towards (and you can get up to 40% of it by your own efforts), it's going to really heavily tilt the game towards countries that can get it high and keep it high, and/or make actions that take it down even less viable than they were before (governments that can't max it are seriously handicapped, especially ones that only appear in the late game like Constitutional Monarchy). There could be some kind of counterweight (rewards for low Absolutism, or penalties for high Absolutism), but it's really hard to balance out such a modifier without creating more balance chaos. (For example, if it causes lots of revolt risk, the meta shifts to setting your country up to have naturally very low RR in order to sustain higher Absolutism, and that becomes the next overpowered mod by proxy.)
 
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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?

They they won't be strong enough to get it.
 
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First I was like: Holy shit, that absolute mechanic seems way too OP.
But then I saw, it's only enabled in that peroid, and it all made sense.
 
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First I was like: Holy ****, that absolute mechanic seems way too OP.
But then I saw, it's only enabled in that peroid, and it all made sense.
It's also enabled in the age of Revolution.
 
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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.
It depends on situation the dutch weren't conquerors, they were merchants. More money means more colonies. 0.2 is actually quite a lot, at +3 stab you get 0.06. Toy'll be able to debase currency for free once every ten years with that. That's 9 times in the period if I'm not mistaken. More if you're ahead of time and have positive stab.
 
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To everyone concerned that they're buffing monarchies and leaving republics underpowered; We still haven't seen the Age of Revolution. Who knows, maybe Republics get a special thing in that age.
 
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Yeah, let's buff the buffed nations even more!!
 
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Regarding the objective "Win the Religious League War", that's something that can be resolved and locked in prior to the Age of Absolutism starting, right? I dunno about everyone else, but in my games, the League War tends to resolve itself prior to 1600.
 
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