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Welcome to the second dev diary for Europa Universalis 4: Art of War. Today, a look at a new way to handle vassals, how we're changing revolts and a sneak peek at how the Persian map is being transformed.

Marches
Marches are a new type of subject that can be created from existing vassals. By designating your vassal as a March, you are giving that vassal greatly expanded autonomy in exchange for greater military service. A March does not pay taxes to its Overlord and cannot be diplomatically annexed. However, they get a 25% bonus to manpower, a 30% bonus to force limits and have 20% better fort defense, making them useful as military buffers against enemy states, or when you simply need additional soldiers more than you need the income from those territories. March status can be retracted, but doing so results in a stability hit and a very large opinion penalty with the vassal whose autonomy you just revoked.

Unrest & Rebels

The old system of revolt risk, with a chance of rebels spawning in a province by random chance every month has gone the way of the dodo. It was a system that has served us well through many versions of Europa Universalis, but we think we have something better.

The new concept reflecting unhappy subjects is called unrest. Unrest in a province will affect how quickly regiments and ships can be recruited there, but it has no direct impact on your economy, since we've introduced Local Autonomy to cover that side of the ledger.

Every province is aligned with one possible rebel faction. Each month, every province has a chance (depending on its unrest level) to see an increase in the progress of an uprising from the local rebels. When the progress reaches 100%, the faction rises up in revolt with as many stacks it has support for, and the unrest is reduced in those provinces - they have expressed their anger through arms and it's up to you to put them down.

Because unrest can happen anywhere, building courthouses and employing theologians is now a good strategy to reduce general unrest, not to mention adopting a few policies to placate the masses. The old tyrannical standby of Harsh Treatment now targets rebel factions instead of provinces and reduces the progress towards an uprising from that faction at a cost in MIL points, scaled to the size of this particular rebel faction. This change means we should get less micromanagement and more direct control of popular satisfaction in the hands of the player.

There is also no longer a distinction between accepted and enforced demands from successful rebellions. A rebel faction's demands are always the same.

In a more positive change, any Rebels that are friendly to you, either through culture or support will lift Fog of War for you.


Persia
Last week, we dove into the doubling of Indian provinces. Another region that has seen substantial changes in our great map overhaul is Greater Persia and the Caucasus.
In 1444 this region is to a large extent split between the still sort of impressive empire of Timur's descendants in the east and the rising Qara Qoyunlu empire in the west. Just like in the last dev diary, the diversity of the region means that it's perhaps best to go over its various parts in turn.

The Caucasus:

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In the time depicted by EU4, the rugged Caucasus will be the border line between the Turkish, Persian and eventually Russian Empires. Throughout all of this, the valleys and the slopes of these mountains are home to a number of different peoples and states attempting to preserve their independence against hungry neighbours.
In order to portray the independent nature and resilience of the area, a new Caucasian culture group has been added to the game. Apart from the familiar Armenian and Georgian cultures, this new group is also made up of the newly introduced Circassian and Dagestani cultures. The tag and province setups have been revised accordingly.

New Tags:
  • Imereti: Small kingdom that can appear in western Georgia (or in late start dates). Historically, this state became part of the Ottoman sphere of influence in Georgia.
  • Circassia: Small Orthodox tribal monarchy in the northern Caucasus representing the various minor states there. This is the primary tag for provinces of Circassian culture.
  • Gazikumukh: A small Shiite kingdom in the northeastern Caucasus. This is the primary tag for provinces of Dagestani culture.


Western Persia:

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While entirely locked in the struggle between the Timurid and Qara Qoyunlu empires in 1444, Western Persia is soon going to be the site of the rise of the Qizilbash and the birth of the Safavid Empire. This region is defined by densely populated valleys with a strong urban Persian culture, both of which the map can now portray in a better way in terms of borders and province density.
As in the Caucasus, including more provinces also allows us to include some of the smaller players in the region.

New Tags:
  • Tabaristan: A small kingdom along the southern coast of the Caspian sea. Primary tag for the new Mazandarani culture.
  • Ardalan: A small Kurdish kingdom in the Zagros mountains.


Khorasan and Baluchistan

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Where western Persia is dominated by mountain ranges and rich valleys, Eastern Persia is a region of mountain ranges and deserts. Due to the much harsher climate, most of Khorasan would often be incorporated into surrounding empires unless these were too weak to control the vast area. The even more inhospitable Baluchistan would remain independent, divided into various tribal entities, for most of the period covered by the game.
The greater number of provinces here primarily means that conquering and traversing this region isn't going to be as easy as it was prior to AoW and will also mean that the revolts that historically started in this area will be a bit harder to put down.

Afghanistan

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Home to thriving cities such as Herat and Kabul, Afghanistan is richer and more influential than the rest of Eastern Persia. During the period covered by EU4, states such as the Mughal or the Durrani empires used this region as a jumping off point to successfully to expand into India or Persia.
The AoW map accentuates the role of Afghanistan as a good base for expansion and a gateway between east and west. In order to show the importance of the Khyber and Bolan passes as routes into India, a wasteland province has also been added to represent the Suleiman mountain range in eastern Afghanistan.
 

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Second. Will there be a chance to make Africa at the Ivory Coast full of diseases for European invaders? So that units would suffer highest attrition?

Also, what does it mean, every province is affiliated with rebel group? If I have a non-accepted culture, will this province only have culture rebels?
 
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Does the option to designate multiple vassals as Marches mean that the unique building of the same name is removed or can you still have one of these in a border province of your directly owned territory?
 
I don't see much practical application for marches. The only purposes for vassals are currenty:
-being diplomatically annexed for expansion
-eating tons of different religion/oversea territory you don't want to bother with, causing the vassal to give off a lot of tax and soldiers
Marches would probably make sense if the manpower boost was larger. Because, let's face it, any player who can actually designate a vassal to a march, where the manpower boost has an significant impact, is still plenty times larger then the vassal. Thus: Small march = no effect, big march = doesnt matter because player is blob.

I would recommend removing the tax penality. Not being able to annex a vassal is already a severe malus to the vassal. But giving the player to guarantue a vassal independence in exchange for more troops would be reasonable.
Alternatively, add a +forcelimitFromVassal modifier to marches.
 
Yes, Paradox have streamlined my ability to stomp the masses under the boot of tyranny! Love the sound of this new unrest system and it looks like it will be a brilliant improvement on the previous 'wack-a-rebel-stack' rebellions with a single stack. Plus, the expanded Persia sounds great.

Also: I'd love to see more uses for Vassal States. I personally have a couple of them in each play through and it sounds great to be able to define the vassal relationship and what the nation in power gets out of the agreement. So I assume now with these Marches, we can collect manpower from vassals from than gold?
 
New rebel system is nice, and i also like the fact that rebels will enforce same demands even if you accept.. No more bullshit like accepting demands gives autonomy instead of free country.. Though, some people will post rage threads about that, i guarantee about that..

There is also no longer a distinction between accepted and enforced demands from successful rebellions. A rebel faction's demands are always the same.
What about religious rebels? Will they enforce demands for ur country to change religion despite beign pagan rebels (or heretics in general)? I would love to create pagan Navarra in Mexico :D
 
I don't see much practical application for marches. The only purposes for vassals are currenty:
-being diplomatically annexed for expansion
-eating tons of different religion/oversea territory you don't want to bother with, causing the vassal to give off a lot of tax and soldiers
Marches would probably make sense if the manpower boost was larger. Because, let's face it, any player who can actually designate a vassal to a march, where the manpower boost has an significant impact, is still plenty times larger then the vassal. Thus: Small march = no effect, big march = doesnt matter because player is blob.

I would recommend removing the tax penality. Not being able to annex a vassal is already a severe malus to the vassal. But giving the player to guarantue a vassal independence in exchange for more troops would be reasonable.
Alternatively, add a +forcelimitFromVassal modifier to marches.

to me marches sounds awesome. i.e. im doing an asian ottoman game. i have no intrest in the balkans, yet i do try to keep europe in check. so i make a massive serbia vassel i make a march, so they can handle most european warring whiel my core slands stay save. post one or two armies there and i can take on most wars. i alreayd do this without marhces, i can only auume it'll be much better as they will reisst much mroe and fight with larger stacks.
 
I like the idea of a march but I'll probably find the life-long commitment due to not being able to diplo-annex a bit of a deal breaker. Borders and rivals change; I doubt I would still want that Rhinelander march kicking around when I've subjugated France (especially if it gets in the way of the holy war CB).

New map is looking good. Please tell me all of these tags (and the other poor neglected countries) are getting ideas.
 
My favorite meme image, the one I also used when you said you were revamping unit pipes:
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Off topic - by the way - unit pips changes need to somehow affect generals because it's quite ridiculous how much more powerful lucky nations are due to the huge importance of extra Shock/Fire.