The Forge

Well, I was supposed to wait until tomorrow to do this, but on account of the announcement of EU4 I suppose I have to churn things out a little bit earlier! Oh I'm so excited for that though... The new and improved monarch system? They ripped it right off of this mod!

Well maybe not right off this mod, but very close. And that is what this update will cover - the monarch/stability system featured in Europa Perfecta!

One of the things that has bothered me the most about Eu3 vanilla is that the monarch of a nation has a very small effect on the nation itself. Not only does it have a small effect on things such as army morale and the such, but the monarch does not even play a role in holding the nation together, or in failure, splitting it apart. A good ruler - especially in an era of kings and queens - can make or break a nation. A poor ruler can be absolutely catastrophic.

To represent these ideals in game, the first most obvious thing to be done is edit the effects of high/low military, administration, and diplomacy skills of a king. How? Well, that my friend is a secret

The next thing to be done is to re-configure this "stability" mechanic that seems so abstractly expressed. The regrowth of stability will be severely affected by the monarchs abilities AND the general well-fare of your realm. If your nation is happy, you should hit 3+ in no time. If not, then don't expect to be above 0. The other parts of reconfiguring stability are reconfiguring the effects of things such as prestige and legitimacy. A nation with a combination of bad prestige, low legitimacy, and high infamy will learn the meaning of the wrath of god. On the flip side, a nation that is able to hold at least 2 of these on the down low should be able to grow and prosper as a country, with lots of nice good modifiers and events!

The next thing I would like to talk about are Personal Unions. In history, these were the real big game changers. Really, the only way I have ever seen a large nation form strongly are cases such as the Union of Aragon over Castille, Scotland over England, Austria over Bohemia and Hungary, Prussia over Brandenburg, Poland and Lithuania etc. You get the idea. Unfortunately, the game has a real lack of anyone getting personal unions except for Austria, so that means it came down to me to fix that. More unfortunately, the coders of this fine game have left me very lacking in the area of effects that involve personal unions, so look forward to seeing a lot more rare but generic missions dealing with personal unions, and maybe even an event or two that gives an inheritance to a distant relative (; Spreading your dynasty will not seem so useless now for sure.

Now inheritences bring up the subject of cores and boy how do I love that subject. One thing that has always bothered me about cores is that 1) they ALWAYS come at 50 years, regardless of the world and 2) they are supposed to represent the TRUE land of a crown/country. Now while that is nice and all, it leads to some issues. If the English crown held onto Sicily for 50+ years, you would probably consider it a sure part of the territory of England. But if the English nation held onto the land for 50+ years, would you consider it a part of England? Well, sure! That is, if the people were English. Like I said in previous blog post, culture will be strongly effected by its owners, and this is one of the many situations where that need apply. Cores will show up much slower now, and must be sped up by things such as an inheritance, taking land in a similar culture, bordering the land, etc. It is very possible that England take over Sicily and never core it for 200 years, only to end up releasing it.

Which leads me to my last idea, which is more of a question to my readers (if any exist). Releasing nations should not exist until NATIONS exist. Releasing crowns is a silly idea. You cannot liberate people until they have a nation that represents there people! So, if it is possible, you can be sure I will be heavily editing the release nation CB.

And with that concludes this update. Thoughts, questions, rants, want to help out? Let me know below.