Hello everyone and welcome to another development diary about Europa Universalis. This time we have a feature for Common Sens, that is so large that it is spread over two weeks of development diaries. It is how we interact with your subject states.

In the subjects overview screen, there is now an additional button where you can open up an interaction menu with all your subjects.

Today we’ll talk about the tools you have regarding vassals, marches and lesser union partners.

Placate Local Rulers
This can be done on both vassals and marches, and lets you pay prestige (if you have positive prestige), to reduce the liberty desire of that subject by 10%.

Embargo Rivals
This is a toggle you can put on any subject. If it is on they will embargo all your rivals as quickly as their diplomats can travel. However, this increases their liberty desire by 5% while active.

Place Relative on Throne
This can only be done on vassals, and only when they have a regency. You can replace the regency with a ruler from your own dynasty.

Enforce Religion
This can only be done on vassals, unions and marches. This is possible if the subject is in your religious group, have less than 50% of Liberty Desire, and you have positive relations. Of course, this increases Liberty Desire by 50%, so its something you have to evaluate when it is desirable to do.

Scutage
This is a toggle that can be set to on or off on a vassal. When it is on, they will not be called into wars, unless declared war upon. However, they will provide 50% more of its income to you.

Subsidize Armies
This is a toggle in marches, where if on, you will send up to 10% of your manpower to them each month, to fill up their manpower pool.

Fortify March
This allows you to build or upgrade a fort in a march, where you as overlord fronts the build costs.

Enforce Culture
This is the option if you got some diplomatic power to burn. You can swap the primary culture of a lesser union partner to your culture for a power cost, but this is only doable if they are below 50% liberty desire and it will increase it by 50% as well.

Siphon Income
Unions usually do not provide money to their overlord, but history is full of rulers who took from one part of their realm to provide for another. This action lets you take 50% of a lesser union partners yearly income if you have positive relations. It will increase liberty desire by 10% but also reduce relations rather dramatically.

Support Loyalists
Unions don’t have any local ruler that needs to be placated, so instead you have a toggle where you spend 10% of their monthly income each month, while reducing liberty desire by 20% as long as its active.

Next week we’ll talk about protectorates, trade companies and colonial nations, and their unique actions.

 

[AchedTeacher]

So what happens with the +50% lib desire after you enforce culture or religion? Will it tick down?

 

[SchwarzerKaiser]

So what happens with the +50% lib desire after you enforce culture or religion? Will it tick down?

Yes.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Yes.

Liberty Desire increases go away over time

Beat me to it. I went to find the post.

edit (from Wiz, page 4)

 

[AchedTeacher]

Beat me to it. I went to find the post.

Thanks. I figured it was answered but it's a massive thread.

 

[Em Ay Ef]

I think you can safely assume that if they had completely rearchitected the trade system (since the current system is built on the fundamental assumption that the trade network is a directed acyclic graph), that would have gotten at least as much prominence and fanfare as the new province development system.

perhaps the last dev diary will be dedicated to trade? (there still are two diaries left, right?)

 

[Montem]

Also remember that not as many players totally understand the trade system, to them it's Conquer node, send upstream, hope for the best, where as for all players, provinces are very clear and were also done OUTSIDE of Dev Diaries in special teasers.

 

[zdlugasz]

it wasn't. my assumption is based on the following facts:

• Bordeaux will lose its end node status, as confirmed by multiple screenshots that show merchants steering from Bordeaux to Champagne.
• a screenshot confirmed that Champagne now feeds into Genoa, while the trade route linking Bordeaux directly to Genoa has been axed.
• a new achievement will be added for trade domination in English Channel, Venice and Genoa.
• the trade route between Genoa and Sevilla will be maintained (it's visible on screenshots), albeit we don't know its direction.

while the choice of trade nodes for the achievement may well be arbitrary, i'm inclined to believe that it simply encompasses all end nodes in the game (since we know Bordeaux lost its status, two out of three end nodes left are already included in the achievement).

of course it's still possible that trade will go from Bordeaux through Champage and Genoa to Sevilla, but it doesn't seem very likely to me. i may be wrong, of course.

(in addition to that, one of the devs mentioned in the multiplayer thread that Genoa is such a wonderful node now. it hardly proves anything though.)

Wow, I missed achievement part (and did not connect Wiz bragging about his his node). I guess that it is quite possible scenario in such case.

But I wonder, age of merchant republics (especially those along western coast of Italy) was during CK times (in 15th century Genoa was a pawn in war between Aragon/France /Milan and in 16th century Genoa finally became vassal of Spain). I do not know economic history of Mediterranean but politically Genoa had almost nothing to say in EU4 timeframe. Why would Spain transfer their dosh to vassal?

 

[indalecio248]

perhaps the last dev diary will be dedicated to trade? (there still are two diaries left, right?)

Dynamic trade routes, maybe?

 

[zdlugasz]

They were not french they were french inspired. Not even Sweden under Gustav III who was probably one of the greatest non french francophiles of all time truly had a french court.

Also really late game the national romanticism has begun to rear it's ugly head.

I do not know how you define French court but I agree that French inspired sounds better (French language, fashion, perfumes, clothes, style, twigs, culture like books, art etc.)
I would say that Romanticism is mostly XIX th century thing, anyway were courts affected by it (in EU4 timeframe)? And actually Romanticism is another example showing absurdity of current culture mechanics, which will be only increased if PU seniors will be allowed to force culture change on PU juniors.

Anyway issue off french-inspired courts is irrelevant for the discussion about PU culture change, since current culture mechanisms will cause that it wont be "nobility/elites in core provinces" but peasants/dissidents/malcontents generally minorities which will get converted.

 

[blackchoas]

Dynamic trade routes, maybe?

I highly doubt that this is case, for one I think you lead with a really big change like that not leave it for last

Second there are only 2 dev diaries left, we know what next week is, and isn't the last one normally left for other changes that didn't fall under the other dev diaries but don't really warrant one dedicated to them and normally the free vs paided features are gone over

 

[Metz]

There should be a more elaborate system of trade goods and what they can do for you. There should be some sort of UI in the trade screen that shows you how many provinces of certain resources you own and how much you make from those goods. You should also be allowed to have trading partners like with other countries. Would add more dynamism.

 

[Demetrios]

Dynamic trade routes, maybe?

I'm wondering if it could be set up as an event - where the two incoming western trade flows from Champagne and Seville (if it is flowing into Genoa) suddenly become outbound trade flows, making Seville and the English Channel the new end nodes instead of Genoa. Perhaps once the overall trade power or income is larger in those nodes (due to colonization and diverting the Indian Ocean trade around Africa) than it is in Genoa, the event occurs and the trade flows switch. If done all at once via event, it shouldn't set up any circular trade flows (or so I'm thinking, someone correct me on this if I'm wrong), and would definitely mimic the change from a Mediterranean-based economy to an Atlantic-based one. Even as a trial run, if it works right, it could set up future events causing dynamic trade flows, which would really spice the trade game up...

 

[TheDungen]

I agree a reworked trade mechanic is very unlikely for common sense. But in time it'd be very nice. Unidirectional trade routes and end nodes are very counter intuitive.

 

[blackchoas]

I agree a reworked trade mechanic is very unlikely for common sense. But in time it'd be very nice. Unidirectional trade routes and end nodes are very counter intuitive.

I have nothing against either of those things, I just have a problem with them being unchangeable,

It should be possible to change the flow of trade or create new ways that trade flows or even destroy trade paths, for example there should be no starting trade paths between the Americas and the rest of the world but rather the trade routes have to be made for a diplo cost, destroyed if you control enough power in a node, giving a CB to effective parties and changing directing costs diplo and will give a CB to revert the change

 

[Metz]

There should be a more elaborate system of trade goods and what they can do for you. There should be some sort of UI in the trade screen that shows you how many provinces of certain resources you own and how much you make from those goods. You should also be allowed to have trading partners like with other countries. Would add more dynamism.

Quoting on myself to further elaborate:


What if we had a system where your country takes into account properly the goods that float around in the world rather than just have them as monetary values? Have trade nodes as trade that gives you money directly and then have country to country trading where you can buy certain amount of goods monthly from different countries (these may or may not take up merchants). Also link events that have to do with resources.

For example, I play as Spain and then there is bad farming year mixed with drought and pests. So Spain right now is consuming more food than what it produces. Therefore, I as Spain will want to buy fish from Portugal for a certain price and wheat from France for a certain price. The price will and should obviously be affected by distance, and then maybe friendliness or how long we've been doing business with each other will affect the price they may sell it to me for. In return. As Spain I can either outright pay for the goods or offer something in exchange (like in Civilization V). So pretend I have a colony in West Africa and they produce a lot of ivory. France will give me a lot of wheat for some ivory which in turn it will make my people not revolt because they are being fed and it will make France's population happier because of the luxury goods.

One can even go an make an inventory/stockpile system like in Victoria 2 and sell things when the price is high. Like if I am the first to discover tobacco or own tobacco provinces, several other countries will pay for it and I will make a lot of profit which I can use to continue to maintain and expand my trade companies/colonies.

Maybe go as far as to even have trade companies and colonies sell and buy their stuff to whomever they want, and if you have high mercantilism or certain colonial policies then they can't do that (gives you more profit but the cost is higher liberty desire).

 

[OldmansHQ]

I wonder if Paradox knows that this will make it easier for Denmark to keep Sweden down. Nobody tell Wiz, guys.

Nah, no worries. this will happen only a couple of patches down the line, when they realize they forgot to code the AI to make use of any of these new features. Wasn't that the case with Autonomy?

 

[Niebulheim]

Nah, no worries. this will happen only a couple of patches down the line, when they realize they forgot to code the AI to make use of any of these new features. Wasn't that the case with Autonomy?

No, it was intentional.

 

[Delta21]

This is a list of improvements/features that I suggest for the upcoming update. I inspired this post from previous user-posts and added ideas of my own.
I will mix in a short analysis of the currently-announced features and explain why I think they make sense(or don't).

Placate Local Rulers
This can be done on both vassals and marches, and lets you pay prestige (if you have positive prestige), to reduce the liberty desire of that subject by 10%.

Placate local rulers: A nice prestige burner that allows you to get that much-need -10% in critical moments. I would suggest that a slight (-0.1 or so) unrest reduction in all vassal provinces when this action is used on them.

Suggestions:
None.

Embargo Rivals
This is a toggle you can put on any subject. If it is on they will embargo all your rivals as quickly as their diplomats can travel. However, this increases their liberty desire by 5% while active.

Embargo Rivals: It makes sense for vassals in more remote areas where you don't dominate trade. A nice way to mess with your rivals and create a bigger power-block against them. Not much to suggest, except that this action should not be available in certain cases: a) rival supports the independence of your vassal (they should be on friendly terms) b) the vassal is above a certain Liberty Desire (say 75%).

Place Relative on Throne
This can only be done on vassals, and only when they have a regency. You can replace the regency with a ruler from your own dynasty.

In my view, Place Relative on Throne accomplishes several important strategic objectives:
1) Your vassal gets a new ruler. If the regency council or upcoming heir have bad stats, this gives you the chance of improving your vassal's monarch point income.
2) You get another opinion modifier bonus with your vassal, which helps keeping them in check. If this applies to vassals of different religious groups than your own, this bonus is even more welcome. Also, losing your vassal in a war means that it can be recovered easier diplomatically.
3) Your vassal gets a ruler of your dynasty. If this means that the previous heir gets replaced with one of your dynasty or "(no heir)", this is a potentially huge advantage.
Why? because a) your dynasty can now propagate through your vassal's royal marriages, so an Austria would 4 good vassals could technically have 20+ Habsburg royal marriages under its control, which is huge for forming personal union. This bonus would continue even if you lose your vassal, and is very much worthwhile for christian nations b) you could form a personal union with your vassal or outright inherit your vassal without spending DIP points
c) Losing your vassal in a war means that you can take them back later, as a lesser partner in a union. If seating your dynasty on the vassal's throne replaces their current heir with no-heir, this virtually mean that at choice, you can transform any vassal in a PU partner, by breaking vassalage and then claiming the throne. Truces and stab hits need to be taken in mind.

As for suggestions:
My main complaint with this feature is that it is entirely focused on monarchies. You have to have a monarchy with a dynasty in order to place the ruler on the vassal's throne (republican or theocratic dynasties/families don't make much sense for this purpose, unless your only purpose is to purge your vassal from an influential dynasty), and the vassal has to have a regency council (and thus be a monarchy) in order to receive the treatment. The other complaint is that this does not address the rare problem of interregnums.

The solutions to the above-mentioned problems could be the following:

Interregnum issue:
The default option should only replace the regency council with a ruler of your dynasty, but keep the previous dynasty's heir.
Replacing vassal's Interregnums however would mean a complete replacement of the vassal's ruler with a ruler AND heir of your dynasty.
Interregnums are rare, so it makes sense that you should be able to gain a more powerful advantage and a greater degree of control over your vassal.

Government type issue:

Theocracies - For vassal monarchies: "Send holy regent"(or something similar) clicking the icon would generate an event : This option should complement the already existent choice system of theocracies with more choices - a) "Send a papal legate" - Gain +X relation bonus with the Papal State , based on vassal development as well as giving you a flat 5 papal influence. This option would give your vassal a +0.5% bonus to missionary strength (and an additional +0.5% against heretics) as well as lower tolerance of heretics for as long as the regent is active. b) "Send a trained scholar" - 10% lower idea cost for as long as the regent is active, and add +1 AMD or DIP randomly to the heir when he/she comes of age. The trained scholar should have slightly better randomized stats than the papal legate (increase the min to 1-1-1 perhaps? c) Anoint local noble: - This option would reduce the heir's claim by 40 but lower national unrest by -1 and increase army morale by 15%.

For vassal republics/theocracies: "Endorse the faithful" - Another event that would give a prestige bonus (+3 or +5) and a bilateral relationship boost (+30) if the vassal chooses a candidate that you chose to endorse. This should increase the likelihood of the AI picking your candidates over other candidates.



Republics - For vassal monarchies: "Designate royal council" - This option would increase a random monarch attribute of the heir by 2 when he/she becomes of age, but remove all other education events, and give +0.1 yearly republican tradition for as long as the regency is active. The designated royal council would still be a regency council (the vassal won't be able to declare wars).

For vassal republics/theocracies: "Bribe a candidate" - It would cost of 0.1 yearly tax income and scale up with government rank (county-level x1, duchy-level x2 etc.). It would grant a greatly increased chance for the AI to pick the selected candidate type. Refusing to pick this option as a vassal would reduce prestige by 5.

Steppe hordes: For vassal monarchies: "Take diplomatic hostage" - For as long as there's a regency council, the vassal will get a -1000 modifier for receiving support for independence. When the regency council ends, the new king automatically becomes a free general (doesn't count up to the leader limit) for the liege but the support for independence limit is removed. If the vassal revolts, the free general is lost and does not get recovered after peace, even if the liege wins.

For vassal theocracies/republics: "Establish trade monopoly" - A 5-year trade power transfer of 50% from vassal to liege. This option can be used once every 10 years.

For other steppe-hordes: Regular place relative on throne mechanic and an additional +40 claim strength of the heir, as he's recognized as the rightful ruler by the khan overlord.

Steppe hordes should receive special treatment as they don't last long as simple hordes - they either transform or get wiped out/subjugated themselves.

Enforce Religion
This can only be done on vassals, unions and marches. This is possible if the subject is in your religious group, have less than 50% of Liberty Desire, and you have positive relations. Of course, this increases Liberty Desire by 50%, so its something you have to evaluate when it is desirable to do.

Enfore Religion is a an excellent idea overall. The only improvement that I can suggest is that there's a time period (5-7 years) during which the vassal/march/lesser partner cannot switch religion on their own and a +1% missionary strength bonus for a period of 20 years (most vassals get integrated shortly after 10 years).
Liberty Desire should scale UP TO 50%, and depend on the vassal's tolerance towards the overlord's religion. The minimum LD increase should be 30%.

Scutage
This is a toggle that can be set to on or off on a vassal. When it is on, they will not be called into wars, unless declared war upon. However, they will provide 50% more of its income to you.

If this is simply tax income then this might not be as worthwhile. My suggestion is that in addition to normal tax income, the overlord would receive a portion (10%) of production (burgher tax) and trade (merchant tax) income from the vassal, as well as a bonus 10% from the tax income. This wouldn't scale up with vassal income modifier factors.

Subsidize Armies
This is a toggle in marches, where if on, you will send up to 10% of your manpower to them each month, to fill up their manpower pool.

Great idea for enclave-type marches or marches of superior army quality. I have seen a lot of discontent with this feature but I believe that it is simply a godsend for hordes, especially when their manpower becomes nearly-worthless at higher tech levels, but in the hands of a capable vassal could wreak absolute havoc.
This feature alone makes marches worthwhile in my opinion and would consolidate their current weak position in the game. Marches get a manpower bonus which makes the amount that they receive be even larger. Just a great idea.

Suggestions:
Not much to suggest here, except a button that toggles between more than 2 positions. Perhaps 3 positions (represented by an icon with 1 soldier, 2 soldier and 3 soldiers). Position 1: 20% of your monthly manpower goes to your march monthly 2: 10% of your total manpower goes to your march monthly 3: 15% of your manpower goes to your march monthly, and you support 50% of their mercenary and fort(not sure) maintenance costs.

A notifier for when a certain march's manpower pool is full should be present (but only when the army subsidies are active).

Fortify March
This allows you to build or upgrade a fort in a march, where you as overlord fronts the build costs.

A great idea for strategical border defense. Careful not to bankrupt your march with fort maintenance costs, but a simply great idea for the upcoming fort system.

Suggestions:
Fort construction should depend on overlord's military tech level and not on march's level. Take care of your underdeveloped marches as the magnanimous suzerain that you are.

Enforce Culture
This is the option if you got some diplomatic power to burn. You can swap the primary culture of a lesser union partner to your culture for a power cost, but this is only doable if they are below 50% liberty desire and it will increase it by 50% as well.

I still don't know how I feel about this, so I will leave it alone and see how it works out in practice.
Not bad in theory though.

Suggestions:
None so far.

Siphon Income
Unions usually do not provide money to their overlord, but history is full of rulers who took from one part of their realm to provide for another. This action lets you take 50% of a lesser union partners yearly income if you have positive relations. It will increase liberty desire by 10% but also reduce relations rather dramatically.

No complaints here. Great stuff.


Suggestions:
Equivalent action for non-christian nations (they can't have PUs).
Don't have anything for most nations...
...but Steppe Hordes could have an option called "extract tribute" of similar effect as a replacement of the Scutage feature - so as not to exceed the 5 possible vassal action preset.

Support Loyalists
Unions don’t have any local ruler that needs to be placated, so instead you have a toggle where you spend 10% of their monthly income each month, while reducing liberty desire by 20% as long as its active.

Great stuff as long as it's the senior partner who pays the money.

Suggestions:
Minor adjustments and tweaks for balancing purpose. I guess those will come around when people start playing the expansion.


That about covers it. Let me know if you think that I should post this in the suggestion thread instead of making a humongo-post.

I want to hear suggestions and comments from you, fellow users, as I might have overlooked certain aspects and might have been limited on imagination. The better we make this - the better

 

[Delta21]

Quoting on myself to further elaborate:


What if we had a system where your country takes into account properly the goods that float around in the world rather than just have them as monetary values? Have trade nodes as trade that gives you money directly and then have country to country trading where you can buy certain amount of goods monthly from different countries (these may or may not take up merchants). Also link events that have to do with resources.

For example, I play as Spain and then there is bad farming year mixed with drought and pests. So Spain right now is consuming more food than what it produces. Therefore, I as Spain will want to buy fish from Portugal for a certain price and wheat from France for a certain price. The price will and should obviously be affected by distance, and then maybe friendliness or how long we've been doing business with each other will affect the price they may sell it to me for. In return. As Spain I can either outright pay for the goods or offer something in exchange (like in Civilization V). So pretend I have a colony in West Africa and they produce a lot of ivory. France will give me a lot of wheat for some ivory which in turn it will make my people not revolt because they are being fed and it will make France's population happier because of the luxury goods.

One can even go an make an inventory/stockpile system like in Victoria 2 and sell things when the price is high. Like if I am the first to discover tobacco or own tobacco provinces, several other countries will pay for it and I will make a lot of profit which I can use to continue to maintain and expand my trade companies/colonies.

Maybe go as far as to even have trade companies and colonies sell and buy their stuff to whomever they want, and if you have high mercantilism or certain colonial policies then they can't do that (gives you more profit but the cost is higher liberty desire).

I like your ideas a lot, but I think that the upcoming update is still a long way from a trade system overhaul. As you describe it, your system looks a lot like Vicky and we wouldn't want EU4 to be like vicky or vicky like EU4. However something could be worked in if we put our minds to it. I think it could start slowly, from the modding community (VeF has great stuff relating to trade goods).

 

[grommile]

I agree a reworked trade mechanic is very unlikely for common sense. But in time it'd be very nice. Unidirectional trade routes and end nodes are very counter intuitive.

I find it reasonably intuitive on a basis of "Europe wants things it doesn't have. The money sloshing around in the graph is the viable profit margin on moving things Europe doesn't have to Europe." - which is a perfectly sensible basis for the representation of trade in a game about the period 1444-1820, though I'll freely admit that one could come up with better trade representations, depending on how one defines the word 'better'.

I also freely admit that the results start to look weird if an Asian, African, or American tag outperforms its historical counterpart.