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Good morning all. I'm in a bit of a daze, having spent the better chunk of last week plotting, backstabbing, frontstabbing and otherwise pushing Persian national interests at the EUIV Grandest LAN Party in Poland. It was an incredible event and a personal highlight of the year. As first act of returning to normal everyday game dev life in Sweden, I'm bringing you another Development Diary. Today we will look at a variety of features, both free in the 1.23 Persia Update and part of the accompanying Cradle of Civilization expansion.

Firstly, a free addition to the game is that we have added Religions and Cultures to Advisors, Rulers, Heirs and Consorts. Depending on where your advisors spawn from, they will have that province's religion and culture, which will be immediately visible next to their portrait, with the icon of that religion, and a star indicating if their culture is primary, promoted or otherwise.

advisors.jpg


Ruler, Heir and Consort cultures and religions will be visible in their tooltips and will primarily be that of their nation, but there are events, both new and revisited old ones to spawn certain peoples and show interactions between various faiths and cultures in your Court.

merchant.jpg

Does the state really need the money?

turks in court.jpg



Now while the Culture and Religion in your court is available for all nations, let's look at a nation where historically this mattered a lot: Mamluks.

Mamluks now have their titular unique Government type: The Mamluk Government, where the ruling class' culture is of great importance. The Mamluks do not get heirs or consorts but always get a new Sultan on Monarch death. The Mamluks nation will decide if they would like to be governed by a Sultan from their own cultures' lands or take a slave ruler from further afield. Historically and in our setup, they will be able to bring in Circassian rulers, who are seen to have high legitimacy over ruling the nation, but you can elect to choose a ruler from lands of other cultures within your nation. While these Sultans will have lower legitimacy, scaling with the amount of your culture lands they have, they will have another advantage in using their Cultural Interactions.

mamluk succession.jpg


Each year the Mamluk Government will gain 3+ruler ADM/DIP/MIL stat for each of their cultural interactions which can be used as follows:
  • ADM Action: Promote [ruler culture] in Government
    • Gain -5% all power cost for 1 years.
  • DIP Action: Sell off [ruler culture] slaves
    • Gain ( Development of ruler’s culture * 2 *current Age ) ducats
  • MIL action: Recruit from [ruler culture] lands
    • Gain ( Development of ruler’s culture land * 50 * current Age ) manpower
So while a home-grown Sultan may start with low legitimacy, you may prefer them over a more stable alternative to get more out of your interactions. Additionally, spreading and conquering certain cultures may be of more interest for the Mamluks.

egyptian slaves.jpg


Additionally, the Mamluk Government itself will give +2 to all Sultans' ADM stat, and allow extra cultures to be promoted, depending on the Government Rank of the nation. Promoting cultures is also 50% cheaper for a nation with Mamluk Government. Now I say "a nation with Mamluk Government" instead of just "The Mamluks" because an Iqta nation who holds Cairo while the Mamluks have been wiped out can adopt the Government for themselves.

Speaking of Iqtas, them themselves will see a change in Cradle of Civilization. an Iqta nation will have incentive to have subjects by way of their Taxation Policies. Every 20 years an Iqta nation can set their Taxation policies and gain a lump-sum of resources depending on their subjects' development and a modifier on the nation for the duration of the policy.
  • Efficient tax farming: +15% National Tax Modifier, +2*total subject development ducats
  • Land Acquisition: -5% Core creation cost, +50*total subject development manpower
  • Lenient Taxation: -15% Subject Liberty Desire, +1 diplomatic Reputation
Iqta Timmy.jpg


It has been speculated before but yes, Timurids no longer start out as a Steppe Nomad. They are an Iqta with a large amount of subjects and foreign cores. They start at Empire rank to boot.

So that's our lot today. Changes in the Courtroom as part of the Persia Update, with Mamluk Government's Culture Interactions and Iqta Taxation Policies with the Cradle of Civilization Expansion. Next week we'll look at something completely different.

Since our Dev Clash ended last week, our team is enjoying a break from Tuesday hostilities and, depending on whome, are busy enjoying their reflection in their trophy. Tuesday Dev Clashes will return in a few weeks.
 
Wait is there any modifier to advisors depending on if theyre part of primary/accepted culture and/or religion? Eg. opinion bonus, some minor bonus, or just for aesthetics?
 
Firstly, a free addition to the game is that we have added Religions and Cultures to Advisors, Rulers, Heirs and Consorts. Depending on where your advisors spawn from, they will have that province's religion and culture, which will be immediately visible next to their portrait, with the icon of that religion, and a star indicating if their culture is primary, promoted or otherwise.
Will their names be taken from the list of their culture? I seem to recall it used to be taken from the cores on provinces before? Or is it still based on culture of the cores on provinces?
 
There are new events interacting with the ruler and culture of advisors, rulers, heirs and consorts but there has also been an effort to update more or less all old events that generate these people to ensure that they now have a cutlture and or religion that makes sense.
There's been in particular a lot of work as well to ensure that event generated advisors (like the one you see for the old event giving a jewish advisor in the dev diary) also come in a variety of flavors that make sense in the part of the world you're playing in.
If you are playing in Iran or India you might see Zoroastrian advisors, old events about Italian engineers will now actually offer an engineer from an Italian culture and so on :)

The most pronounced effects for now for this is interactions with the new events (a new ruler that has the wrong religion or culture, or even both will for instance see a reaction to taking over the throne when he succeeds) but it's not the only effect it has.
 
Will their names be taken from the list of their culture? I seem to recall it used to be taken from the cores on provinces before? Or is it still based on culture of the cores on provinces?

It is still based on cores, the culture lists have only ever been intended for custom nations and are not at all as good as the ones for countries. :)

Event generated advisors will take names from where they are from as well (which might be another country or some far off part of your empire). You can actually see this in the screenshots.
 
You should consider making those extra actions cost points from a pool linked to monarch powers, not directly from them, like I think is the case with the russian governments. It would harmonize a bit those kind of bonuses and would give an incentive for a player to use those actions, since if players are like me, they would be very reluctant to use their precious monarch powers for those actions.
That's what they do
 
If you are an empress, have conquered the Mamelukes, and dominate the trade of wine, there should be an event that provides a rather short +5 diplomat advisor of Westerosi culture.
 
If you are an empress, have conquered the Mamelukes, and dominate the trade of wine, there should be an event that provides a rather short +5 diplomat advisor of Westerosi culture.

Fun trivia, I gave the name of the sprint for when we implemented them. I named it "The Unsullied"
 
No you can't see the stats but since you get the +2 ADM it is super low chance of getting only 3 in ADM meaning you'll more likely end up somewhere around 5-6 like Prussian Monarchy does for Prussia.

When I play I seem to most of the time get only god rulers as Mamluks. Though of course sometimes I get unlucky and I get a 0 in like diplomacy.
So if this is the same change as the MIL roll for Prussian monarchy, this means that the actual roll formula changes from 2d4 - 2 to 2d4.

This means that the probability for each monarch are as follows:
2 ADM: 6,25% (1/16)
3 ADM: 12,5% (2/16)
4 ADM: 18,75% (3/16)
5 ADM: 25% (4/16)
6 ADM: 37,5% (6/16)

Were Mamelukes Sultan known for the administrative brillance?
 
Will advisors from non-accepted cultures or untolerated religions be more expensive to employ? And will it be possible to get Jewish advisors as Poland?
 
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Tbh I expected advisors with different culture/religion to impact somehow country stability, conversion and culture switch costs at the basis. It should be harder to convert provinces with certain religion if the whole "council" follows it. If your country has a very low heathens tolerance and all your advisors are heathens, then all provinces following the main religion should be quite disappointed, "ruler influenced by pagans!", "the end is nigh when the unbelievers rule the country", simply the unrest should be increased in those provinces as it should be decreased in those heathen lands. Meanwhile culture could be used to simply diminish the penalties from same/different culture group modifiers and/or improve output from primary/accepted cultures.
 
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Hmm, Mamluk government looks interesting but not being able to disinherit will hurt it. It means its rulers will average a little under 11 total mana which worse than a regular monarchy with proper disinheriting.

It's not like monarchies get to do that for free though. Plus Mamluks get other options...
 
@Trin Tragula will upcoming features expand on the advisor culture and religion?

Also I wanted to ask if any developers could reply with ''read'' when they have read a suggestion in the forum. It is very disappointing when you make a suggestion and don't know if it was read or even considered to be implemented. EU4 is my favorite game and I have posted a number of threads, but I don't know whether they have been read at all. Or how I could improve my suggestions.

Anyway have a nice day!