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EU4 - Development Diary - 21st of February 2017

Hello everyone. Tuesday has crept up on us once again which means it's time to armour up, grab my sword and jump back into the Thunderdome that is the Developer multiplayer, but before that, we've got a new Dev Diary!

Today we'll take a closer look at the much speculated Tributary States mechanic from the upcoming expansion. It's been fun reading the comments of this thread and see what the community has been suspecting we've put in the game. I'll be tackling that here

Getting straight to the meat of it, Tributary is a new subject type in Europa Universalis IV available for Nations in the Eastern Religion Group. Tributaries can be established both through warfare and through diplomacy and, while large nations are certainly not going to want to become your tributary willingly, through winning war you can force a nation of any size to bend the knee and pay up.

When you have established a nation as your Tributary, you will receive and annual tribute from them. You as their overlord are able to instruct them what to send, from Money, Administrative Power, Diplo Power, Military Power and Manpower. each year of successful tribute mutually raises trust between the nations. If you are the benevolent type of player, you can even tell them that no tribute is necessary. I am not a benevolent Overlord.


eu4_110.png


Here is Ming with their mighty collection of Tributaries. Along with demanding annual tribute, there are some new interactions available exclusively for nations with tributaries (artwork for them not yet in, so don't mind the placeholders):


  • Bestow Gifts: send subject 0.5 of target’s yearly income,
  • Send additional troops: sent 2 years of subject’s manpower,
  • Demand artifacts: Take 5 prestige from subject,
  • Demand additional tribute: take 0.25 years of target’s income from target
these interactions will also affect the subjects' liberty desire, which brings us to an important point, what does it mean to be a tributary. For what purpose does a nation bend their knee to the tax collector?

Although Tributaries are subjects, they are the most free of any type of subject. They may make their own allies, subjects and foreign policy. They will not follow their overlord into wars or any of the usual subject behavior. Instead, they will be given protection. If another nation who is not also a tributary to the same overlord attacks them, their Overlord will be called to arms. The Overlord may accept or decline although, depending on the relationship and trust between the Overlord and Tributary. Declining will have ill effects on their relationship with their tributaries.

The main cause of relations going south is due to the subject refusing to give tribute. If liberty desire grows too high, caused by the usual modifiers from relative strength, relations etc, Tributaries may start thinking they would be better off keeping their hard-earned manpower, money or Power, and so refuse to give tribute. Eventually, this can lead to the Tributary relationship breaking down, so keep and eye on your subjects and don't demand too much additional Tribute.

Speaking of milking nations dry, it seemed only natural to give Hordes the ability to have tributaries. I've been having an absolute ball with my favourite nation keeping the Horde economy turning through my horseback tributary collectors.

eu4_111.png



Tributary States are a paid feature in the upcoming yet-unnamed expansion, and are available for Hordes and for nations in the Eastern Religion Group (Shinto, Confucian, Three Buddhists) and are additionally available for any nation who is the Emperor of China.

What is the Emperor of China, you ask?

We'll find that out next week.
 
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@DDRJake
- Does the Tributary CtA have special rules, or can I e.g. give away my overlord's provinces?
- What about Tributaries with their own subjects? Does the tribute-receiver get called in against the Independence War of a Tributary's vassal / CN, etc?
 
@DDRJake

Please consider renaming these options...
  • Bestow Gifts: send subject 0.5 of target’s yearly income,
  • Send additional troops: sent 2 years of subject’s manpower,
  • Demand artifacts: Take 5 prestige from subject,
  • Demand additional tribute: take 0.25 years of target’s income from target

... to make the direction absolutely explicit. "Demand" and "Bestow" are both obvious enough, but "Send additional troops" ... do I demand two years worth of their manpower from them, or do I bestow them two years worth of manpower from my manpower pool?

I'm sure the tooltips will clear it up completely, but clarifying this in the main text would help. :)
 
@DDRJake

Please consider renaming these options...


... to make the direction absolutely explicit. "Demand" and "Bestow" are both obvious enough, but "Send additional troops" ... do I demand two years worth of their manpower from them, or do I bestow them two years worth of manpower from my manpower pool?

I'm sure the tooltips will clear it up completely, but clarifying this in the main text would help. :)

You are sending it. It's clear as it is.
 
@DDRJake
archduchy of austria between (1533-1606), republic of venice (as long as they have ioanian islands), russian tsardom between (1571-1701) were tributary states of the ottoman empire. also safavids, poland and morocco paid tributes to the ottoman empire time to time.
 
@DDRJake
archduchy of austria between (1533-1606), republic of venice (as long as they have ioanian islands), russian tsardom between (1571-1701) were tributary states of the ottoman empire. also safavids, poland and morocco paid tributes to the ottoman empire time to time.

I thought the tributaries here were originally supposed to be based on the tributary concept of the East Asian world originating in the self-awareness of China as the sole cultural and political center so to find a better way to keep Ming from simply munching everything and so on? - a concept that, by the way, was adopted by their neighbouring states (which is why its limited to Eastern religious groups etc.) who in turn, from time to time, also established their own subalternate tributary relations with each other.

Its not entirely accurate when compared to how that system worked in reality, but ah well gameplay goes first :)
 
After the release of Monks and Mystics for CK2, but before the release of Utopia for Stellaris and the as-yet-unnamed patch/expansion for HOI4. :p

I'd say Utopia will be released before this, since it was already announced a while ago. This EU4 expansion is still unannounced.
 
Could I suggest the the income from each interaction is displayed in the subject overview tab? The box with the interaction symbol is large enough I would have thought.
 
How big is this expansion?
 
Can I chose whether to make a new subject into a normal vassal or a tributary?And can these two types be made into the other diplomatically?
And seriously,what does the Manchu mandarin hat actually mean on the top of the Ming screenshot?
 
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So are Daimyo tributaries to the Shogun, or are they traditional subjects?

Reason I ask is, currently, it's really annoying trying to play any daimyo because the Shogun starts diploannexing his vassals from Day 1.
 
Will Russian event "Fyodor Baikov's Diplomatic Intermezzo" be changed?

How would you suggest we change it?
I am not sure I think creating an actual tributary relationship for this incident would make sense.